


Scrawny Motherfucker with a Cool Hairstyle

by goodoldfashioned



Category: RedLetterMedia RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Tension, Co-workers, Denial of Feelings, Drunk Sex, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotionally Repressed, First Time, Friends to Lovers, High School, Insecurity, Light Masochism, M/M, Makeover, Mutual Pining, New Years, Reunions, Small Towns, Under-negotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-30 23:57:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 57,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21436816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodoldfashioned/pseuds/goodoldfashioned
Summary: “You’re disgusting and you don’t know when to quit.”“Those are your two favorite things about me, Jay.”
Relationships: Mike/Jay
Comments: 72
Kudos: 89





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The fic title is from [this song that was 100% written about Jay](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDZN7qBxa1o)
> 
> I had this idea: what if they knew each other a little bit in high school in rural Wisconsin before they both ended up working at the VCR repair shop, and that's why Jay sort of defers to Mike, because Mike is forever a cool & hot upperclassman in his mind. 
> 
> So this is of course about the Half in the Baaaaag characters and their world only! All the backstory stuff is made up for the fic and not intended to resemble any real people or events.
> 
> Enjoy, and thanks to who all who have encouraged me to write more, your messages mean a lot! <3
> 
> ~

Jay had a theory that knowing people for too long was like saying the same word over and over until it sounded like nonsense. This theory was based almost entirely on his history with Mike. If you’d seen someone grow up, sort of from afar and sort of right alongside you, and then ended up sitting next to them in a shop for eight years with little to do except talk to each other, give each other surreptitious looks of judgment, and on occasion allow this tension to explode into the kind of sex that felt a little bit like a fistfight, there was no chance that person wouldn’t ultimately turn into a jumble of inscrutable nonsense in your mind. It wasn’t just a Mike thing, Jay told himself. It was inevitable. 

Growing up in a tiny town in rural Wisconsin meant that Jay had known of Mike before ever actually speaking to him. It was a fact of life in Orfordville that you just knew who everybody else in town was whether you wanted to or not. Mike was two years older and two grades ahead of Jay, which in childhood made Mike seem like he had basically always been an adult, from Jay’s perspective as a dorky kid trailing behind Mike and his cooler friends in AV and drama club. The well-substantiated rumor was that Mike and his sister had kind of raised themselves, and the friends Mike ran with looked out for each other in a familial, grown-up way that made them seem not just particularly mature as teenagers but like they had never been kids, not really. 

Jay had doting parents who considered his amateur movies the work of a budding genius and three little sisters who worshipped him, but nobody else in town really thought he was worth a damn, and by high school he still felt and looked like a baby, especially compared to Mike, who was cool and tall and handsome and even on the football team until he got bored with it and decided he was going to make weird movies for exclusive cool kid screenings instead. 

The first time Jay got invited to one of these screenings was a kind of seminal moment in his life, to the degree that he felt a little bitter toward Mike for how important it was to him. Jay was a sophomore, Mike a senior. They had run parallel to each other since Jay had started high school, just because they shared an interest in movie-making that forced them both to squeeze whatever enrichment they could from the school’s extracurricular club offerings, but they both existed in their own worlds as much as possible, and Jay was also kind of afraid of Mike, though he wouldn’t have admitted this even with a gun to his head. Mike had a way of looking at people that seemed to strip them down to their bare essence, and being stripped down to his bare anything was Jay’s greatest fear, at that time in his life and for a long time afterward.

Halfway through his sophomore year, Jay was holding court with the few nerds at school who would listen to him talk about whatever super-edgy movie he was working on. To Jay’s complete mortification, Mike overheard this and asked Jay if this film of his was, ‘like, finished?’

The look on Jay’s face when he turned and saw Mike looming behind him was not friendly. He was doing the thing where he accidentally showed his teeth while semi-snarling in disbelief. Mike seemed unfazed as usual and just stared down at Jay, awaiting an answer.

“I mean,” Jay said, fidgeting. “It could still use some work. But the principal photography is done, and the edit--”

“The principal photography,” Mike said, and he smirked. “Yeah, cool. You should come to our screening night. Nobody but me ever screens anything. Bring your thing. It’s Saturday at my place.” 

Mike looked at the other nerds with something like pity, looked back at Jay, then walked off while Jay was still stammering about how he could probably make his edit presentable by Saturday, yeah, okay, sure, sounds good--

Jay preened a little for the others when Mike was gone, but soon afterward was in a complete panic. The movie he was working on was okay-ish, and he’d been planning to eventually show it to his usual audience of fellow dweebs, but the idea of screening it for Mike and his savagely cynical friends was not something that had ever entered his brain while working on it. If he’d had them in mind as his audience, he would have stopped the whole project from the get-go out of sheer terror. 

But he was working on being tougher. He’d been beaten up twice since starting high school and had realized he was giving off a lethal combination of prey energy mixed with the kind of smart-assed arrogance he’d gotten away with when he was younger and less noticeably smaller than everyone else. He neglected his homework and spent the rest of the week focusing entirely on making his movie as good as it could possibly be, even paying the neighbor girl another forty bucks to reshoot one of the scenes she’d acted in, this time with better lighting. 

Saturday night arrived. Jay was prepared for jeers and laughter, trying to convince himself he didn’t care too much what Mike’s friends would think of his movie. It was at least true that he was mostly concerned about Mike’s opinion. He had a feeling Mike would be charitable in the presence of the others, but that might be worse than being made fun of openly. Jay didn’t think much of Mike’s movies, which he’d seen bits and pieces of through AV club adventures. They were pretty juvenile, low brow comedy and obnoxious editing gags, clearly the work of a reformed jock. Mike had more of a presence when he was live and in person, not hidden behind a camera. Everybody in the school’s lame theater department deferred to him, and when he wasn’t involved with a production it always felt sucky and lifeless. 

Mike’s house was not a dump, just a normal house. Jay felt bad for expecting some kind of drug den. He knew everyone at the party, and they knew he was a theater kid who was okay at makeup effects and pretty good at lighting. At least, he hoped they thought of him that way, or at all. Nobody seemed too excited when Mike announced to everyone that they would be screening a Jay-directed film that evening. Everyone more or less ignored Jay during the excruciatingly freeform milling around and talking portion of the party, except for Mike’s sister, who offered him some seven-layer dip she’d made for the occasion. Jay thought seven-layer dip was disgusting but ate some anyway, to be nice, also to have something to do.

When it was finally time to start the movie, half the group was still in the kitchen laughing and drinking cheap beer. Mike was in the living room with Jay, Mike’s sister, her creepy older boyfriend, and a handful of others. Jay was seated on the couch in an embarrassingly central fashion. His heart leapt into his throat when Mike popped the tape of his movie into the VCR.

“Get the fuck in here!” Mike shouted, silencing the group in the kitchen. “We’re starting.”

Everyone in the kitchen filed into the living room, a few grumbling about this command but nonetheless obeying it.

“Jay,” Mike said, falling onto the couch beside him. The tape was paused. Jay was thunderstruck by the fact that Mike knew his name, though of course he did. “Do you want to say anything?” Mike asked, gesturing to the TV with the remote. “Before I start it?”

Everyone was staring at Jay, waiting. This was his big chance. He wanted desperately to be funny in this moment, and felt like he would never amount to anything if he wasn’t.

“I hope you guys are okay with snuff films,” he said, aware that this was not the comic genius he’d hoped to suddenly be capable of. 

Nobody laughed, but when Jay glanced nervously at Mike, he was smiling in a way that looked different from other Mike smiles Jay had witnessed. It was like a pat on the back or an arm around Jay’s shoulders, some evidence that Mike was secretly rooting for him. 

“Okay,” Mike said, turning back to the TV. “World premiere of Jay’s snuff film, here we go.”

The movie was actually an attempt at a moody horror flick about a guy who was searching for a girl who went missing when he was a kid. The lead actor was Jay, unfortunately, and his little sister played the missing girl when she was young. Jay’s neighbor played the grown-up version of her, at least according to Jay’s character’s suspicion. One of the girls in the room muttered ‘oh god’ under her breath when it was revealed that the grown-up girl was a prostitute, and Jay took that note to heart, sinking in on himself a little on the couch. Nobody gasped at the parts that were supposed to be scary, and there was a mild amount of inappropriate laughter. Mostly everyone seemed bored, except Mike, who was watching intently, maybe just because he could feel Jay sneaking looks at him throughout the screening. 

When the movie ended and the DIRECTED BY credit popped up on the screen, Jay pretty much wanted to die. Why had he included that? As if it was a real movie or whatever.

“Huh,” Mike said. “That was pretty okay, actually.” 

“Who’s the little girl?” a guy sitting on the floor asked. 

“My sister,” Jay said. 

“She was good at being creepy.”

“Yeah, I. Taught her that. I guess.”

“I don’t get it,” Mike’s sister said. “Was she the same girl who went missing, or not?”

“It’s intentionally ambiguous,” Jay said, with apology. 

“That’s a cop out,” the creepy boyfriend said. “Lame.”

“No, it’s not,” Mike said. “It’s just beside the point.”

“There was a point to that?” someone muttered. Jay was pretty sure it was the same girl who’d groaned at the prostitute reveal.

The crowd dispersed after that, everyone either drifting into the kitchen for beers or out onto the back porch to smoke. Mike got up and popped the tape out of the VCR. He held it up, looking at Jay.

“Can I keep this?” he asked. “It’s not your only copy, right?”

“Right. Yeah, you. Why, though?”

“Because I want to watch it again.”

“Oh. Okay. Sure.”

Mike wandered off with the tape and Jay stood from the couch, feeling like maybe he should leave. He drifted hopefully into the kitchen and was ignored by the group that was talking in there until Mike reappeared, gave Jay a beer and stood next to him so that the circle of people opened up to include him. 

Jay was wary of beer, as he disliked the idea of being loosened up by anything. He’d never had alcohol beyond a curious taste in the safety of his parents’ house. He drank from the bottle like it was a lifeline anyway, and heard his laugh getting progressively louder. He was also doing the licking-over-his-teeth thing that only made them more obvious, but he didn’t really care. He was actually starting to have fun, the heat on his cheeks and the shake in his hands slowly draining away.

After that night, he and Mike were something more like friends. They still didn’t spend much time together outside of school theater productions and the AV room, but when they did there was a quality to it that made Jay feel older, cooler, and more serious as a someday potential filmmaker, just because Mike was giving him the time of day. 

This felt even more true when Mike was accepted to a private college in Chicago and got funding to attend. Jay was a little shocked and jealous, but he told himself he shouldn’t be either. Mike was impressive to everyone, even fancy colleges apparently, and this meant Jay was partially off the hook for admiring him in a secret, fervent way that sometimes made him look at Mike too long or too intently. 

Mike’s college acceptance and bright future also meant Jay might have one, too. Coming from Orfordville didn’t necessarily preclude success the way Jay had feared it would, and Mike had once called Jay his protégé, jokingly. It was sort of true, though. No one else had the patience they did to sit in the AV room at school long after they were supposed to be out of the building and redo edits until they were exactly right. Mike had devised a way of sneaking in and out through the school cafeteria’s back door, so they could keep whatever hours they liked in the cozy darkness of the AV room, seated before the wall of monitors. Mike never got caught or refused to let Jay stay there with him, and he always walked Jay home when they were done, as if there were vampires or werewolves lurking around Orfordville after dark, or something else that might eat Jay if Mike wasn’t there. 

Mike’s sister threw him a graduation party and all the theater kids were invited. Jay had a stomach flu and had missed the last two weeks of the school year almost entirely. He wanted to go to the party anyway, but he still felt and looked like shit and ended up sleeping through it. A couple of days later, Mike had already left town. 

What followed was a weird, lonely summer. It was the late nineties, pre-Facebook, and Jay knew Mike’s AIM username but had never really chatted with him on there. Occasionally he would see Mike’s name pop up in his list of friends who were online and would sit there sweating the idea of maybe asking him how it was going in Chicago, among rich city kids, but he never did. Two years later he applied to the same college Mike went to and wasn’t accepted. 

Jay ended up at an unremarkable college in Milwaukee; his grades had never been great. He majored in film studies but dropped out after two years of being pressured to talk about his feelings in his film classes, which felt more like fucking group therapy than anything to do with actual movie-making and were full of pretentious asshats who reminded him of the worst of the theater kids back home, totally lacking self-awareness and talent. For a while after dropping out he tried to keep making movies, but mostly he worked at a hardware store in the city, watched movies alone in the apartment he shared with three other guys, and tried to get women to give him the time of day. When it sometimes worked he always decided the ones who bought into his bullshit weren’t actually right for him and fled, then aggressively refused to think about why.

Thirteen had always been his lucky number, and when he was thirteen years out of high school and fired abruptly from the hardware store as it came under new corporate management that cleared out the old staff, he told himself he was going to get his fucking life together. He was thirty years old, still a virgin, half pretty fucked up and half doing a lot better than most people he knew, and he was determined not to just take another shitty job to pay the bills but do something actually interesting that suited him. 

He laughed out loud when he read the ad for the VCR repair shop job on Craigslist. It sounded like it was written by a lunatic, which piqued his interest.

_Yes it’s 2011 yes we are still open and repairing VCRs. Need someone who is not an idiot who can work irregular hours AND DO HOUSE CALLS!!, some experience with ancient technology preferred, small hands REQUIRED. Don’t waste my time applying for this if you don’t have a functional car or don’t know who Dick Miller is. (And yes I will be able to tell if you just Googled him before the interview.)_

Jay had small hands, a car that more or less was reliable, and still had the old VCRs that he’d used for editing as a kid. He’d done some occasional repairs to them for the purpose of watching his old VHS tapes, and was enthusiastic about ancient 70s and 80s technology in general, even had a record player. He definitely knew who Dick Miller was. 

He stressed over how to dress for an interview with the kind of individual who’d written that Craigslist ad, and ultimately settled on jeans and a nice but-not-too-nice button down flannel shirt. He wore the same work boots he’d worn at the hardware store for the past three or so years, and showed up right on time to Lightning Fast VCR Repair, which was in the warehouse district of Milwaukee, near some train tracks and not much else. 

The front door of the shop was open when he got there, but nobody seemed to be around. The whole place had a musty, stuck-in-time smell, and the front counter was littered with all kinds of shit: curling magazines and VCR parts, hand tools, Star Wars toys, also a half-empty beer bottle. 

“Hello?” Jay called.

There was a crashing sound from the back room.

“One second!” someone called. 

The voice didn’t sound familiar, but as soon as Mike walked into the doorway, Jay recognized him and felt mildly assaulted. 

“What do you want?” Mike asked.

“Um.” Jay wasn’t sure if he was being asked this as Jay from high school or a random person who had wandered into the shop. Nothing on Mike’s face indicated that he’d remotely recognized Jay. This wasn’t especially painful, as Jay didn’t look like that scrawny kid anymore, aside from the conspicuous teeth. He’d gained weight, especially in the past few years. So had Mike, but that was definitely him. His eyes were the same. “I’m here about the repairman job,” Jay said, kind of wanting to leave. 

“Oh, right. Hold up your hands.”

“Huh?”

“Your hands, lemme see ‘em.” 

Mike walked over and Jay stepped backward, alarmed, but also lifted his hands and showed them to Mike, who frowned at them and nodded.

“Okay, good,” he said. “C’mon back.”

Jay followed Mike into the back room, wondering if they were really going to get through this whole interview without Mike remembering him from school. Mike’s obliviousness didn’t seem like an act. He pointed at a chair in the dingy back room and sat opposite it on an old sofa, picking up a clipboard and focusing on that rather than on Jay’s face. Jay craned his neck and looked around at the cramped, cluttered back room, trying to figure out what that crashing sound had been.

“Small hands-- check,” Mike said, using a pen that was tied to the clipboard to literally check this off on a sheet of paper. “I’ve got big ones, see,” he said, lifting his left hand in demonstration. “Gets kinda tricky with some of the more delicate repair work.”

“Uh-huh,” Jay said, staring at him. Mike’s hair had thinned out a little, but he was still handsome and attractively huge in a way that filled Jay with envy and made him feel thrown backward through time.

“Sooo, you got a resume, or what?” Mike said, lifting his eyebrows.

Jay reached into his back pocket and produced a folded-up resume. He smoothed it out a little before handing it to Mike. 

“Hmm,” Mike said, frowning down at it. “Hardware store, huh?”

“I’m good at fixing stuff,” Jay said. “And I know a lot about movies.”

“Movies.” Mike scoffed as if this was a strike against Jay, still looking down at his resume. “Yeah. Great. Film studies, hmm. I see that here. You didn’t graduate, though? But you--” Mike looked up at Jay, eyes going wide. “You went to fucking Orfordville High School?”

“Yep.”

“Is this a joke? Wait, hold on. Fuck! I know you!”

“Yeah. I’ve, like. Been to your house.”

Jay felt stupid after saying so, and his face got hot. He didn’t mean to suggest Mike still lived in that house. Jay’s parents had left Orfordville by then, and Mike’s family had moved away even before they had, not long after Mike left for college.

“Holy shit.” Mike started to smile a little, slowly. “You’re that kid.” He glanced down at Jay’s resume, not-subtly reading his name from the top. “Jay! The little arthouse horror dork, yeah. Jesus christ, it’s really you. Fuck, man. That’s crazy. What are you doing here?”

“Uhh, looking for a job? I didn’t know it was you who placed that ad, I-- I wasn’t aware that you’re, um. The manager here?”

“Wow, you look really different.”

“Thanks?”

“Sorry, just.” Mike looked down at himself and shrugged. “So do I, it’s okay. Anyway, umm.” Mike threw the clipboard aside. It crashed across a small table nearby, scattering beer bottles and breaking a few. Mike didn’t look over at the mess, just beamed at Jay and said: “You’re hired!”

“I don’t have to prove that I know who Dick Miller is first?”

“Oh, please.” Mike stood and threw his hand out for Jay to shake. “You probably have a tattoo of his face on your chest.”

“Um.” Jay wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He stood and shook Mike’s hand, flushing again for the feeling how giant it was compared to his own. “Thanks?”

“It’s a pretty sweet gig,” Mike said, leading Jay back out to the front room to show him around. “If you don’t like doing much actual work. Or making much actual money, if we’re being honest.” 

“How long have you worked here?” Jay asked, not wanting to let on that he was surprised Mike had ended up with this kind of menial job.

“Mhmm, about five years, I guess,” Mike said. “I’m not great with, like, keeping track of the passage of time, you know what I mean?” 

“No?”

“Oh, shit, hang on. You need a shirt. Company policy, can’t be behind the front counter without a shirt!”

Mike dashed into the back room and returned with an enormous khaki shirt that didn’t smell entirely clean. It had the Lightning Fast logo over the left pocket. 

“Perfect,” Mike said, standing back to admire Jay in when he’d replaced his flannel with the work shirt. Mike had a somewhat crazed look in his eyes that made a little more sense when he said, “Or, actually, wait!” and dashed into the back room. When he returned he had a beer for Jay. 

“It’s like eleven o’clock in the morning,” Jay said, holding the beer and watching Mike gulp from the half-empty one that had been sitting on the counter.

“So what? Do you even live in Milwaukee?”

“Yeah, but--”

“They why the hell am I explaining a pre-lunch beer to you? Drink up. Later we have do a house call, but for now we can hang out and shoot the shit.” 

Mike climbed into a tall chair behind the counter and gestured to the neighboring one. Jay took a seat, wondering who had sat there for the previous five years and what had become of them. 

“So,” Mike said, watching Jay take a sip of beer. “How’ve you been all these years?”

“Eh,” Jay said, shrugging one shoulder. “You?”

Mike gulped down the rest of his beer, then pitched the empty bottle into the back room, where it shattered against either the wall or the floor. He turned back to Jay as if this should answer his question. Jay nodded and tried to come up with a way to ask Mike about his film career without bringing up the fact that he’d searched for Mike on IMDB back in the day and had always felt disappointed when nothing came up. 

“Still into making movies at all?” Jay asked.

Mike’s eyes darkened. 

“You ever been to L.A.?” he asked.

“No.”

“Here’s a tip. Don’t go.” 

“Okay. Wasn’t planning to.” 

“Smart boy. You were always smart, Jay. Well, for Orfordville.” 

“I guess you met a lot of smart people at college in Chicago,” Jay said, a little stung by that, though he knew what Mike meant. 

Mike scoffed wetly and looked at Jay like he was insane. 

“That shitshow? Not hardly. Anyway, have you seen _Just Go With It_?”

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s a shitty Adam Sandler movie.” 

“Is there any other kind of Adam Sandler movie?”

“No, but listen. It’s set in Hawaii, and they shot on location. I have a theory about this.”

Jay listened to Mike’s theory and later corrected himself by pointing out that there was one non-shitty Adam Sandler movie that was not actually made by Adam Sandler, _Punch Drunk Love_. Mike hadn’t seen it. Jay was kind of impressed by Mike’s theory about the other movies, and impressed by Mike in general, still, despite everything that seemingly hadn’t gone right for him. It made Jay feel better, in a way he hadn’t even known he needed, about the things that hadn’t gone right for him either. 

“Did you ever get married or anything?” Jay asked, muttering this warily when they were on their way back from the house call. 

“Jesus, no,” Mike said. “You?”

Jay laughed like the question was ridiculous, because anyone who knew him would understand that it was.

“Uhh, no,” he said. “As you may recall from high school, I was never a hit with the ladies.”

“Who says that?” Mike asked, cringing. “A hit with the ladies? What are you, eighty? Oh my god. Let’s go to a bar, I’ll get you laid. I can get anyone laid, it’s a magic skill that I have.”

Jay had finished two beers by then and almost said, I don’t want to get laid, which wasn’t something he usually allowed to even solidify into a conscious thought. He burped into his fist instead and went to the bar with Mike. Once there, Mike seemed to abandon his getting-Jay-laid plan and just talked to him over beer after beer until they were both drunk and laughing a lot. 

“Oh I forgot that we were gonna get you fucked,” Mike said when they were walking home together. It was February, below freezing outside, and they had to leave Jay’s car at the bar because neither of them was in any shape to drive. 

“S’fine,” Jay said, waving his hand through the air. “I can wait.” 

He laughed at his own non-joke and looked over at Mike like he would get it, too, as if Mike knew he was a virgin. Mike just grinned at him drunkenly. 

“Anyway, this is my life,” Mike said, slurring. “It ain’t much but you’re welcome to it.” 

“What?” 

“I meant, my apartment.” Mike pointed ahead at the two-story building they were approaching. “You wanna come up?”

“I’d better go home, kinda feel like I’m gonna hurl.”

“Ha! Yeah, you’re small. Low tolerance, I mean, you know-- Lightweight. Bantam class. My little Orfordville twerp, after all this time, what the fuck. Hang on, I should walk you home.”

“Jesus, I’m not fifteen anymore. I’ll be fine, see you tomorrow. Byyye.”

Jay pressed on through the cold alone, determined. He had the feeling Mike was just standing there watching him go and was kind of worried about him but didn’t turn back to check. 

Mike was fine the next morning at work, for one definition of fine. The coming weeks revealed that he was a near-unhinged mess in some ways, totally capable and in control of his destiny in others. Jay was fascinated by him, even more so than he had been as a kid, and still haunted by the sense that Mike was mature and admirably weather-beaten in ways that Jay could never catch up to. At bars, people still responded to Mike the way they had in high school, and customers at the shop were the same. Mike moved through life with the kind of stoic ease that Jay busted his ass to even halfway project, but he didn’t seem to enjoy it much.

Jay started spending most of his evenings after work at bars with Mike, then every evening, then weekends, too. Mike seemed to need him in a way that Jay had only ever found repulsive when other people gave him hints that they might want him around that much. With Mike it felt like being retroactively accepted as one of the cool kids-- The coolest one of all, because Mike demonstrably preferred Jay’s company to that of his other friends, whom he mostly seemed to vaguely disdain. He seemed to vaguely disdain Jay at times, too, especially when they disagreed about the merits of some movie or the musical stylings of John Carpenter, but this was part of why Jay felt fully accepted at last, no longer sheltered from Mike’s shitty moods. 

He still tended to defer to Mike in a way that worried him a little, because of the way Mike seemed to get off on pushing people and testing their boundaries. Jay told himself that his instinct to follow Mike’s lead was fine, normal. Mike was his boss, after all. 

Mike didn’t really talk about his personal life, which was a relief. Jay wanted nothing less than to discuss his own. At one point in April an attractive young woman came into the repair shop, threw a large fountain drink from Arby’s in Mike’s face, called him a pathetic asshole and walked out. Jay just watched Mike wiping the soda off his face and debated whether or not to ask.

“I called her the wrong name last night,” Mike said, muttering this from the corner of his mouth. “Thought she was over it. Guess not.”

“Jesus,” Jay said, mostly because he’d parted ways with Mike after midnight and was scandalized by the thought that Mike had gone trolling for sex without him afterward.

“I have face blindness, Jay!” Mike said, turning to him.

“Really?”

“No,” Mike said, wilting. “Anyway, she used to give me free Jamocha Shakes. Guess that’s over with.”

“I don’t even want to know what that is,” Jay said, cringing away from him.

“Oh, my god, you fucking dork!” Mike beamed at Jay and flung some of the soda on his hand in Jay’s direction. “It’s a thing on the menu at Arby’s! A milkshake! Not a sex act! She works there, you fuck!”

Jay tried not to laugh but ultimately couldn’t help it. They had developed a kind of unspoken game wherein whoever got the other one to laugh really hard scored a point, and if they could just stare deadpan at the other’s attempt at comedy, that was also worth a point. Jay had no doubt Mike was winning this game, but he still enjoyed it. 

The last dregs of winter were long gone by June, and Jay felt fatter, poorer, and happier than he had in years. Until he had Mike with him near constantly, he hadn’t even realized how alone he’d felt before. He’d even convinced himself that he liked it. Most people just asked so much of him, eventually. All Mike seemed to need was Jay’s proximity. They didn’t even have to talk to feel comfortable together, though when they got going Jay found it hard to shut up and interrupted Mike enough that he sometimes pouted about it, probably thinking Jay didn’t notice. 

Jay didn’t feel like anything about their friendship was maybe weird until they were out with some of Mike’s drinking buddies at one of their usual bars and a guy named Tim gave the two of them a long look after Mike came back from the counter with a second beer for himself and for Jay.

“Really, you only got another round for your boyfriend?” Tim said, getting a laugh out of the other two guys at the table. “What about the rest of us?”

“Stay jealous,” Mike said, seemingly unfazed.

Jay forced a laugh but could feel his cheeks getting hot as he sipped from his beer. Despite his regular outings with Mike and his lay-getting magic, Jay still hadn’t even kissed anyone since an embarrassing incident in college that had made him conclude he just didn’t like kissing. He’d mostly settled on the idea that he didn’t want to deal with the realities of sex with other people, case closed. This was a theory that held up when he jerked off, because he didn’t fantasize about scenarios involving himself and half the time wasn’t even thinking about humans, unless they were getting fucked by the nightmarish monster creatures that he was actually fantasizing about. 

But over the course of the year this had sort of-- Shifted. It was something to do with Mike, he feared. Something about the way Mike looked at him like he knew everything and would never make Jay fess up to any of it but might use what he knew to make Jay do other things, as if Mike was Jay’s own personal nightmarish monster creature wearing a human disguise, and increasingly Jay wanted Mike to make him do things: weird things, humiliating things, irreversible things.

Eventually there was no sort-of about it, as the summer pressed on and Jay saw Mike’s bare arms more often, also his thighs, because Mike was fond of long shorts that rode up on him when he sat. In most cases Jay couldn’t technically see Mike’s thighs, at least not the thickest upper inside parts of them, but something about what he could see of Mike’s bare legs made him think too much about the parts he couldn’t see, and then of being wedged between them with his mouth open and Mike’s huge hand on the back of his head. 

By August Jay was pretty fucked up about it, laughing nervously at near everything Mike said and doing what Mike told him to even when his requests were at their most obnoxious, like asking Jay to fan him with a magazine when the air conditioning went out in the shop. Jay wasn’t stupid; he’d figured out by then that pushing people’s buttons was like a game for Mike, and that Jay had all of Mike’s favorite buttons to push, because he could jam his fingers into them over and over and Jay just took it like this was his game, too. Mike picked on Jay for his tidiness, his need to correct factual details that Mike surely got wrong on purpose half the time, and, increasingly, for his interest in movies where perverse, fucked-up sex shit was featured heavily. 

“Do you do this stuff?” Mike asked, using his beer to gesture at the TV in Jay’s apartment during a viewing of one of these movies, wherein a writhing woman was being whipped by a demon. “Like, after I fuck off for the night, when we part ways, do you go to sex dungeons and whip willing wenches?”

“Yes,” Jay said, keeping his eyes on the screen. He wished it was true, that he was even that vanilla, or that anything. He didn’t know what he wanted, except to be crushed between Mike’s thighs, or for Mike to pin him down and pull him open at his seams, just basically that he was in big trouble. 

“Hmm,” Mike said, leaning a little closer. “Yeah, I don’t think you do. You’re what they call a contradiction in terms, Jay. Or a conundrum.”

“Can we just watch this, please?”

“Oh, sure, I bet this is your favorite part.” 

“As you can clearly see, I’m not sitting here with a boner.”

Jay regretted saying that very much. Mike guffawed, and was definitely staring at Jay’s crotch when Jay turned to give him an irritated look. Jay moved a pillow over his lap and Mike laughed harder, lifting his wrist to cover his mouth and almost spilling his beer on Jay’s couch in the process. He was slumped back against the cushions like he owned the place, like always.

“You’re like a prude,” Mike said, gesturing to the pillow on Jay’s lap. “But then you also love this disturbing psychosexual shit.” He waved his beer at the TV. “It’s so funny to me.”

“I’m glad you’re amused.” 

“Yeah, I’ll bet you are.” 

Something about the way Mike said that made Jay look over at him, and he was instantly sorry he had. Mike was staring at Jay like he could see straight into him. He was almost smiling, mostly in his eyes, and looked like he did when he was plotting the setup for a joke, already enjoying the payoff in his own mind. Jay jerked his gaze away when he found himself thinking that it also looked like Mike was hungry in the way that zombies and other creatures that ate people alive were when they scented prey nearby. 

Jay started worrying about the Mike thing almost nonstop, which fucking sucked, because it both ruined the interactions that he used to look forward to more obliviously and also made them excrutiatingly satisfying on another level, in a way that was making Jay start to understand that he kinda loved being tormented, if the right person was doing the tormenting. He would have caught on earlier if there had ever been another right person in his real life before Mike.

By his thirty-first birthday he was having regular dreams about waking up with Mike suddenly in his bed, sucking or gnawing on some part of him, and when he woke up hard and remembered he was alone he wasn’t even sure if he was relieved or not. Sometimes he dreamed that he was back in the AV booth in Orfordville High, sitting beside Mike, both of them in their current adult-sized bodies and therefore way too close in that dark little closet of a room. Jay had always loved that part of being there together, when he’d let his brain fuzz into a pleasant half-awareness that he could smell Mike’s sweat or shampoo or cheap aftershave. He’d loved that even if they hadn’t spoken a word to each other in an hour they felt so _close_, not just physically but like their brains had almost merged while they stared at the images on the screens together, which was a horrific concept that he shouldn’t have liked. In his dreams about the AV room they were often watching some embarrassing moment in Jay’s life on the monitors, and while Jay cringed Mike would edit the worst parts out for him. He was usually also rubbing Jay’s leg under the editing table and whispering a combination of soothing and filthy things that Jay tried not to remember when he woke. 

“What is with you?” Mike asked when they went out together for Jay’s birthday. Jay was determined to get shit-faced, though he also realized that doing so around Mike was an extremely dangerous plan of action. He just needed some fucking relief, had felt tensed up all over since mid-summer.

“I’m fine,” Jay said, avoiding Mike’s eyes. They were at the corny German restaurant that had become their favorite place for special occasion dinners before going out and getting plastered. Other friends would join them later. The German restaurant was a them-only thing. 

“You’re not fine,” Mike said, studying Jay from over his laminated menu. “Are you worried about getting old, Jay? You should be. Trust me, nothing gets better in your thirties. It’s all downhill from here.”

“Thanks, now I feel a lot better.”

“Ha!” Mike held up his finger, then pointed it obnoxiously in Jay’s face. “See, there. You admit it. Something is wrong. Tell me, at once.”

“Since when do you care about your friends’ problems?”

“I don’t, but you’re not just my friend, Jay. You’re my, hmm. What’s the right word for it. Emotional support animal? Manservant?”

“When we were kids you called me your protégé,” Jay said, muttering this and keeping his eyes on the menu, though he already knew what he wanted.

“Oh, god, did I?” Mike winced and tugged on the collar of his shirt. “Sorry. Guess I cursed you, saying that. Now you’re stuck here with me! Is that what you’re depressed about? Spending your birthday with your mentor in loser-dom?”

“Jesus,” Jay said, glaring at him. “You’re the one who sounds like he’s having issues. Maybe don’t call my life loser-dom on my fucking birthday? I happen to not think it’s actually that bad.”

“I was joking, Jay.” Mike looked pissed off in a blink, because he’d had his bluff called. Nothing got him authentically angrier faster than that, especially when Jay was the one doing it. “Lighten up,” Mike said, and then he dipped his fingers into his glass of water and flicked some droplets at Jay when he went on staring at his menu. 

“Can you not treat me like shit on my birthday, maybe?” Jay said, wiping the water off of his face.

“Gosh, yes, I’m so cruel to you, aren’t I? Sitting here buying you dinner and asking you if you’re okay. Though, what am I saying, that’s your worst nightmare.”

“What.”

“I see now why you’re getting all pissy. Riiiight. You thought I was asking you to talk about your feelings. God forbid! Question rescinded, _please_ forgive me.”

They both drank a lot of beer with dinner and remained in bad moods. Jay ate a ridiculous amount of food, even by dinner with Mike at the German restaurant standards, and barely felt like going out after but forced himself, as people were expecting him at their usual hangout bar. When he and Mike arrived everyone encouraged Jay to do shots, because it was his birthday, and because he was already pretty drunk and feeling morose, he did them. He knew the hangover would be brutal, but in the meantime he felt great, three shots in. Even Mike had stopped annoying him, though he was the loudest advocate for getting Jay to drink more.

“Mike,” Jay said at one point, near-shouting over the music. He grabbed Mike’s arm for traction and to make sure he was listening. “You gave me my first beer!”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “That was five beers ago, I haven’t forgotten.”

“No, no, I meant at your house. When we were kids. After we watched my stupid movie!”

Mike’s eyes softened in a way that made Jay think of the look on his face after Jay made his bad snuff film joke before the screening. Like Jay was small and helpless and Mike had to keep all the sharp stuff in the room away from him.

“That was really your first?” Mike said. “That night?”

“I was fifteen, what the fuck! Yes! When d’you have your first beer?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I don’t?”

“No, Jay, you’re too innocent to know my sordid history.” Mike winked and drank from the bottle he was currently working on. “Have another shot, though! It’s your birthday!”

But I do want to know your history, Jay thought. Except that Mike was also right. Jay was afraid to hear about what had happened in L.A. He was never going to ask about the gossip from back home or if Mike’s sister was still with that creepy guy. He didn’t want to know why Mike wasn’t married or seemingly capable of keeping a steady girlfriend, even though women fucking loved him and gravitated toward him on nights like this to an almost comical degree. Jay was especially afraid that the answer to that last question wouldn’t be the one he wanted.

Later, washing his hands in the men’s room after taking a leak, Jay looked up at himself in the mirror and had a terrible epiphany about why Mike wanted him around. Jay never asked personal questions. They could both pretend they didn’t have feelings, until Mike decided it would be funny to point out that Jay actually did. They were still in the AV room together, in the dark, staring straight ahead and not looking at each other, only right now Jay was also staring at himself in the mirror, hating it but unable to turn away. He felt his stomach drop, and the moment he started puking into the sink two guys walked in laughing, first with each other and then at Jay.

Jay crashed into a stall and got sick again, the misery of barfing both sobering him a little and making him feel like he barely knew where he was. He wanted to be home in bed-- No, he wanted Mike, where was Mike? Jay had some things to tell him, some wisdom to impart.

He got himself together as best he could and went back out to the bar, which seemed a hundred times noisier and more crowded than it had before he’d puked, also suddenly boiling hot. He blearily reasoned that maybe he wasn’t just too drunk after too much food, maybe he was getting sick with a stomach flu, just like he had when Mike left town without saying goodbye.

“Whoa,” Mike said when Jay rejoined their group.

Jay shook his head, not wanting everyone to know he’d puked. They were all older than him. He felt fifteen again and fucked up. 

Mike understood Jay’s wordless entreaty and helped him make a stealthy escape. It wasn’t unlike Jay to leave his own birthday party without telling everyone goodnight, and these were mostly Mike’s friends, anyway, people who put up with Jay because anyone who wanted to spend time with Mike had to tolerate his sidekick, suddenly. 

“I threw up,” Jay said when they were walking away from the bar together, Jay with his arms folded tight over his chest and his shoulders curled inward, Mike hovering like he might need to catch Jay if he tipped over. 

“I can tell,” Mike said. “You’re all white. It’s my fault, but don’t worry. I’ll, uh. Just come with me.”

“I’m already coming with you,” Jay muttered, letting his shoulder bump against Mike’s arm.

“I know. Keep doing it, is all.”

Mike was drunk, too, which was why they were walking. Jay had to stop twice to dry heave by the side of the road, and the second time he did it he could feel Mike’s hand on his back and heard himself moaning in a kind of sorrowful recognition of how much he liked it. When he straightened up and resumed walking he was miserable and out of it enough to acknowledge the fact that he wanted to be carried the rest of the way. 

He had been under the impression, based on nothing, that they were headed back to his place, and was disproportionately surprised to find himself standing at Mike’s apartment door, watching Mike unlock it. Mike’s place smelled like pizza rolls and a type of cheap dish soap that reminded Jay of his college dorm kitchen. He had noticed this before and was more comforted by the combination than ever as Mike brought him over to the couch and instructed him to lie down. 

“Poor Jay,” Mike said when he was seated on the floor beside the couch, patting at Jay’s forehead with a cold, damp washcloth like Jay was dying of consumption. “I ruined your birthday.”

“No,” Jay said, because he felt like it was his own fault, all of this, and because he’d rather have Mike ruin something than not have him there at all.

“Drink more water,” Mike said, prompting him to sit up.

Jay moaned. Sitting up hurt. He did so anyway, because Mike had told him to, and let Mike tip a glass of water against his lips, as if Jay’s hands weren’t working. 

“You’re all sweaty,” Mike said, watching him drink. 

“Mmph,” Jay said. He licked his lips and met Mike’s eyes, feeling comfortable in his misery as he settled back down onto the couch. At least he wasn’t alone like this, like he had been in the men’s room when those guys were laughing at him and exchanging comments about how disgusting it was that he was puking into the sink. Mike was here now, so everything was fine. Jay remembered wanting to say some things to him, but they felt indistinct in his mind already. 

“What is this look you’re giving me?” Mike asked.

“Nothing. It’s just. You’re, like. Too big to be sitting on the floor.”

Mike grinned. “How are you still this drunk after barfing and walking three miles?”

“Oh my god, we walked three _miles_? How are we _alive_?”

“Good question. God, you’re so--”

Mike swallowed the rest down and shook his head. Jay rolled toward him and pulled his knees up, curling as much of himself as he could in Mike’s direction.

“I’m so what?” Jay asked.

“Have you ever seen this show called My Strange Addiction?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Do you need anything? What can I get you? I bought you dinner for your birthday, but you seem to have puked it up, so. Gotta get you another present.”

“A present,” Jay said, starting to fall asleep.

“Yeah, name it. Anything.”

“Anything.”

“That’s what I said.”

Jay closed his eyes so he could think about it. He made a sound under his breath when Mike brought the cold washcloth to his cheek again, and felt like a baby for doing so, like Mike was coddling him. Mike had no idea. Jay was capable of so much toughness. Nobody was willing to push him as far as he wanted to go. He decided to ask for that, for his birthday, from Mike, but then he fell asleep instead.

In Jay’s dreams Mike was licking his cheek but his tongue was very cold.

“Sorry,” Mike said when Jay remarked upon this in the dream. “I’m not actually alive.”

“That’s fine,” Jay said, grabbing for him. He moaned and cursed when his hands passed through Mike, who was some kind of drifting-away ghost. “Don’t go, though! You can lick me, I don’t care if it’s cold, freeze me, kill me, too--” 

“You’re nuts,” Mike said, and disappeared. 

Jay woke up on Mike’s couch, feeling awful. It was morning, and Mike was sleeping on the floor, Jay’s hoodie sweatshirt bunched up under his head like a pillow. Jay didn’t remember taking it off, just that he’d been hot. The washcloth, no longer cold or damp, was draped across Jay’s forehead. 

Jay pushed the washcloth away and turned his cheek against the couch cushion so he could watch Mike sleep. The rise and fall of his chest was a comforting sight after that dream, and Jay wanted to reach down and touch him, to make sure he was warm. He could see it, though, really: Mike’s cheeks got a little rosy when he drank too much. 

Stop it, he told himself, his hangover already pounding against the sides of his skull. Stop being a little freak at every opportunity, don’t do this, turn back while you still can.

But all he actually did was stare at Mike for an hour, lovesickness compounding his headache and sense of impending doom. There was no turning back from anything, because he’d never again wake up and not want Mike there next to him.

**


	2. Chapter 2

After the birthday debacle, Jay tried to distract himself in the aftermath by going all-in on his preparations for Halloween, but the dawning of his favorite time of year only made the feelings he wanted to deny sharper and more seemingly profound. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining things, but Mike seemed a little gentler with him. He made fewer biting comments, though still some, and acquiesced more often to Jay’s choices at the movie theater and in DVD selection. Jay wasn’t sure he liked it, except for the way Mike kept looking at him with a kind of guilty anxiety that made Jay wonder how long Mike had watched over him while he slept. 

The leaves changed and the weather got cooler, and Jay caught himself feeling like the kind of person who might be secretly, incredibly lucky, because Mike was making him feel that way just by existing. He would also catch sight of himself in reflective surfaces and recoil away from this feeling like, who the hell do you think you are? Mike fucked women, exclusively so far as Jay knew, and Jay was his emotional support animal, nothing more.

He kept telling himself this but couldn’t fully believe it. In the meantime it felt increasingly good to do what Mike asked him to. If it was all he’d ever get from Mike, he’d take it. 

A couple of weeks before Halloween, they got into a friendly argument about Mike’s willingness to entertain the idea of ghosts existing, which lead to him daring Jay to spend the night in a graveyard with him. Jay countered that this could potentially get them arrested and Mike called him a chickenshit, which lead to Jay ultimately agreeing to this plan even though he felt like an idiot. Mike of course believed that he’d brilliantly convinced Jay to do this with him by accusing him of being afraid of nonexistent graveyard ghosts, but ultimately it was just another case of Mike doubling down on some insane request and Jay sighing and moaning but going along with it in the end, because Mike had asked him to. 

Also, fucked up as it was, it was another opportunity for him to spend the night with Mike.

They waited till after dark and pitched a tent on the outskirts of a sprawling cemetery in a suburb just outside the city. The tent was really too small for the two of them, but it was what Mike had and they weren’t serious enough about this venture to buy new camping equipment for the occasion. Mike had brought a ton of snacks, booze, and something neither of them had touched in a while: a video camera.

“For capturing evidence of the supernatural,” Mike said when he had it turned on, recording and pointed at Jay. 

“So in other words, nothing,” Jay said, cheerful anyway. He didn’t need much to be happy, even in an illegal campsite on a stupid ghost hunt. Mike’s attention was all it took to keep him content. 

“We’ll see,” Mike said. He put the camera on his shoulder and pulled a flask out of his back pocket, flipped it open with his thumb and took a swig. 

He looked hot, doing this, in a way that made Jay worried that it would be obvious, right on his face, that he was thinking so while he stared up and watched Mike’s throat bob as he swallowed whatever he had in the flask. Mike was watching Jay like he knew what he was thinking, showing off. The softness he’d exhibited toward Jay since his birthday had faded, and he’d started ordering Jay around with some bite in his voice, like he was losing his patience a little. 

“Let me have some,” Jay said. 

Mike passed him the flask and turned toward the cemetery, filming the darkness while Jay drank from the flask, which was filled with some kind of whiskey that tasted awful. He recapped it and went over to stand beside Mike, watching the tombstones do nothing. 

“Maybe we won’t see the ghosts until we review this footage later,” Mike said. 

“Are you being serious right now?” Jay asked. “Please say no.”

Mike pointed the camera at Jay again.

“This is the face of a man who’s about to be proven wrong,” Mike said, and Jay blushed because-- What? Mike had called him a man? Until then he’d assumed Mike still saw him as the little kid who pretended not to be staring at Mike from across their shabby high school theater stage. Or maybe the problem was that Jay still saw himself that way. 

They of course saw no ghosts, just got drunk and shushed each other every time they thought they heard something from across the cemetery. Jay was fearing cops or some hired security officer in a golf cart. Mike was hoping for ghosts. Eventually they were both convinced that neither thing was going to show up, and they crawled into the tent, where Mike had folded up the comforter from his bed, because he couldn’t find his old sleeping bag when they packed for this excursion. 

“Wait, listen,” Mike said, grabbing Jay’s arm as they were settling in together for the night. Jay’s head was spinny from the booze. Mike was squeezing his bicep pretty hard, looking at the half-zipped tent flap like he really thought he’d heard something. 

“What?” Jay asked, whispering. 

“Shh. Listen, I thought-- There was, like. A howling noise.”

“Oh, bullshit!” Jay laughed and let his head flop down against the comforter. Mike was still holding his arm. It felt stupidly good. Nobody had touched him in a while.

“I’m not fucking kidding! Shh!”

Jay was going to say he was already being quiet, but before he could Mike let go of his arm and brought his hand up to cover Jay’s mouth instead.

Jay made a surprised little noise and stared up at Mike. It was dark in the tent except for the glow of Mike’s phone, which he was using as a flashlight. Mike’s hand was hot and huge against Jay’s lips and his eyes were wide when they locked on Jay’s, like he’d startled himself or like he really thought werewolves were howling outside. 

“Fuck,” Mike muttered after a while, and he took his hand away. His phone’s screen went dark. “Maybe I imagined it. Could have sworn I heard, uh. Something.”

“Might have been the wind through the trees.” 

The weather was mild for October, but with every hour that passed it had seemed to get colder outside, and Jay was shivering a little, wondering if he should worm inside the comforter or just ask Mike to lay on him. When Mike zipped the tent flap completely shut, Jay couldn’t see anything for a few seconds, and even after his eyes adjusted he could sense more than see the shape of Mike beside him, close enough that they could hear each other breathing in the dark. 

“So I guess I win,” Jay said. “No ghosts.”

“First of all, Jay, paranormal investigation is not a game.”

“Oh my god.”

“Secondly, the night has only just begun. This is the real spending a night in the cemetery shit right here. Trying to sleep. What may come to disturb our slumber when we’re most vulnerable? Watch out!”

“Mhm.” Jay did feel sleepy, also cozy, despite the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking about how much warmer he’d be if he scooted over just a few inches and curled up against Mike’s chest. He’d had enough to drink that the thought of doing so didn’t seem outlandish or even scary, but not enough that he was actually going to try it.

He closed his eyes and let himself drift comfortably, not quite sleeping. The wind outside shook the walls of the tent. The comforter of course smelled like Mike, particularly like Mike when he could stand to take a shower, which was a scent Jay could appreciate. Mike kept sighing in a kind of awkward way that Jay was enjoying, like for once he didn’t know what to say. 

“Are you asleep?” Mike asked after a while.

“No,” Jay said, though it didn’t feel entirely true that he wasn’t. He was in a vulnerable place, it was true. Anything might come for him in the night and dig out his softest parts.

“I feel like we should be telling secrets or something,” Mike said.

“Secrets? What are you, twelve? I don’t have any secrets.”

“Oh, bull-fucking-shit. Jay, jesus christ. You’re, like, the most mysterious person I know.”

“You know everything about me. We spend every second together, practically.”

Mike scoffed. He was so close that Jay could feel it against his cheek. Mike’s breath was warm and smelled like whiskey.

“You’re like this self-contained little world,” Mike said. “Nothing gets in or out.”

“Well. That’s absurd. What are you talking about?”

“You don’t fuck people, Jay. I’ve noticed.”

“Maybe it’s people who don’t fuck me. Don’t be an asshole. I’m short, and-- You’ve seen me. I don’t want to humiliate myself, fuckin’ sue me.”

“Man, that poor-little-me insecurity shit is just something you wear like armor. Give me a break. You could-- Fuck, never mind. I’m not supplying you with compliments.”

“Good, ‘cause I don’t want them.”

“Great.”

Jay felt more awake after that, his heart beating hard. Of course Mike was thinking about him on this level. Mike thought about everyone he met with the same razor-sharp, judgmental analysis. It was just his default. It didn’t mean anything.

“I have a secret,” Mike said. “If you want to hear it.” 

“No,” Jay said, earnestly. He was scared. Mike had accomplished that much.

“Tough shit, ‘cause I’m telling you. Remember that old tape, your horror movie you made in high school? I still have it.”

“Ew,” Jay said, without meaning to. He was grinning, flushed across his cheeks. “Why?”

“It’s not like I fucking sit around watching it or anything. I just didn’t want to throw it out. Seemed mean or something. So, you know. If you’re seeking a copy, if you lost yours. I have one.” 

Jay was a meticulous archivist and still had all his old juvenilia, even the worst and dumbest movies he’d made as a little kid. Mike knew this about him. He was offering up this secret for some other purpose.

“Why’d you stop making movies?” Mike asked, poking him.

“It’s too hard and too expensive,” Jay said. “And I’m not sure I was ever any good at it.”

“No, you were. I mean, for a kid with no resources.”

“Meh.”

The unasked question hung in the air between them. What was Mike’s excuse? Jay was more afraid to know what had hurt him than he was to be hurt himself, so he threw his body on that emotional grenade instead. 

“I’m cold,” Jay said, rolling over so that his back was to Mike. 

It was as good as asking Mike to hold him, he thought, and he waited for Mike to understand that. 

“Damn right you are,” Mike said, and he rolled over, too, away from Jay.

Jay held his breath and felt ice coating his bones, like Mike had cursed him. Or maybe it was more like Mike had been carrying him and dropped him suddenly. He knew all he had to do was say Mike’s name in the dark, soft and sweet, and Mike would hear the reluctant thaw in his voice and roll over to at least spoon up behind him for warmth. 

And god, Mike would be so warm. Jay could feel it, even with a couple of inches of cold space between his back and Mike’s. He shivered from his shoulders down to his ankles, overcome by how much he wanted it and not sure why he couldn’t make himself ask, except that Mike could still surprise him, which meant that Jay could get dropped again, or drop-kicked. Mike was just drunk and bored on a failed ghost hunt. He often tried to stir shit up when there was nothing else to do, with no thought spared for the long-term consequences. The smart thing to do in response to his attempts at agitation was always nothing.

Jay didn’t feel smart. He felt freezing and newly lonely and like he was going to crack right down the middle if he didn’t roll over and squirm against Mike like the needy, desperate, touch-starved little dork that he really was. 

“Why’d you quit making movies?” Jay muttered after a while, because that was the actually brave thing to do.

“Apparently I’m too idealistic,” Mike said, like he’d been waiting for Jay to ask. “Or so I was told.” 

Jay didn’t know what to say. Mike was such a cynic, but it was true that he was overly romantic about everything, too. 

“I don’t like working for people or collaborating with anybody who doesn’t want to fall in line and do what I tell them,” Mike said, kind of angrily, as if Jay had the nerve to ask him to elaborate. “I wanted to be in charge right away. And I wasn’t going to be. So I left.” 

Jay heard this as Mike telling him: do what I say, every time, or I’ll ditch you. It was a confession that he could never love something enough to be ruled by it.

It took them both a long time to fall asleep, but they didn’t do any more talking, just tossed and turned and occasionally grunted while shifting positions, trying to get comfortable. In the morning, Jay woke up with Mike’s jacket draped over him. The tent flap was unzipped and Mike was standing outside, recording the misty cemetery landscape at dawn. 

“Aren’t you freezing?” Jay asked, climbing out of the tent to bring Mike his jacket.

“You were shivering,” Mike said, turning the camera on Jay. “‘Look, everybody, Jay survived the night. I credit myself.” 

“Take it,” Jay said, holding the jacket out. Again, Mike was treating him like a baby, like someone who needed Mike’s protection. 

Mike turned the camera off and took the jacket but didn’t put it on. He looked worn down and tired, like he hadn’t gotten much sleep. Jay supposed he looked the same way. 

“I guess I owe you one for going through with this,” Mike said. “Is there any place you want to dare me to spend the night?”

“Fuck you,” Jay said, before he could think about how he should have actually responded.

Mike snorted and then tried to squash his evil grin. Jay debated whether to fake laugh or gut punch him. That had been a joke, probably planned all morning while Mike waited for Jay to wake up, about how Jay wanted Mike in his bed, wanted Mike to fuck him, wanted Mike to hold him while he slept without having to ask for it outright. Mike was on to him. Jay had tipped his hand with too much staring, or too little fucking other people, or something. 

“I’ll let you think about it,” Mike said, and he lifted the camera again, maybe just to have something to hold over his face. “You can get back to me.” 

Jay had slipped into his old prey-energy ways again, and Mike was toying with him, knowing that he could. Remaining in a silent funk about being called out like that would only exacerbate the situation, so Jay did his best to pretend that everything was fine as they packed up the campsite and headed for the parking lot where they’d left Mike’s car. Mike stared at Jay a lot that morning, even while driving. He seemed half amused with himself and half like he was worried Jay was going to knife him.

On Halloween, Jay threw a party at his apartment as usual. All of the usual friends came-- a few from college, two former roommates, some ex-coworkers from the hardware store job, plus a couple of guys he’d met through Mike. His Halloween parties had a deserved reputation for being excellent on all fronts: food, decor, music, horror movies shown in the dark side room that was dedicated to them, also just general spooky energy. Jay had one of his college theater friends do elaborate zombie makeup on him that year, and it was impressive-looking if uncomfortable. Mike showed up in regular clothes, carrying a six-pack of pumpkin beer and wearing a headband with red devil horns. 

“Holy shit,” Mike said when he found Jay, either reacting to his grotesque zombie makeup or the successful party that was by then in full tilt. “You look, uhh. Alarming.” 

“Thanks,” Jay said. He’d been a little colder toward Mike since they camped in that graveyard, but he was careful to modulate it so that he didn’t seem too bothered by the comment Mike had made, not wanting his calculated coldness to belie the actual burning rage underneath. “What are you?” he asked when Mike stood there staring at him, looking vaguely upset. “The devil?”

“If you haven’t figured that out by now, I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Ha-ha. Give me those.” 

Jay took the pumpkin beers and added them to a spookily-themed cooler that was belching out dry ice, backlit by a green-gel light so that it looked like poisonous gas. Mike trailed Jay around the party like the crowd was making him nervous. Jay had rarely seen Mike in any social setting where he wasn’t the glue that held everyone together, commanding a default central role. In the absence of his usual authority he became something more like Jay’s assistant in hosting, helping him replenish the food and change the movies in the viewing room. He seemed glad to have something to do. Jay was tempted to feel smug about how anxious and therefore subservient Mike was acting, but he couldn’t stop thinking about how Mike had included him at the screening party way back when. He let Mike hover at his side all night long, until they’d both had enough beers that they were ignoring everyone else anyway, laughing in corners as other people got drunk and embarrassed themselves in varying degrees.

Only when people had begun to trickle out around one in the morning did Jay realize Mike had co-opted Jay’s party for his own purposes, stealing Jay away from it so he could have him to himself. Which, like so much of what Mike did to him, shouldn’t have felt attractive, impressive, or somehow infuriatingly right. 

Mike was of course one of the last to leave, and he leaned in Jay’s bathroom doorway to watch Jay’s friend remove the zombie makeup. This particular friend was an attractive woman, so Jay braced himself for her to end up going home with Mike as he watched his actual face reappear from underneath all the spirit gum and fake blood.

“How do you two know each other?” Mike asked. He’d sipped from beer bottles throughout the party but was surprisingly sober and sharp for that hour of the night.

“College,” Jay’s friend said. Her name was Adrienne and she wasn’t really Mike’s type, flat-chested and bleach blond in a vaguely punk-ish way, but Jay had seen him go off-type before. 

“I always forget Jay went to college,” Mike said. “It’s like, in my mind, between high school and when you came into the shop this year? You were just sitting in the AV room back in Orfordville or something.”

Jay looked over at Mike, shifting his gaze without moving his face, which was currently held in Adrienne’s hands as she flaked a tricky patch of makeup off. 

“I did lots of stuff without you,” Jay said, realizing when he heard himself speak that he was a little less sober than he’d planned to be and very tired. He’d been cooking things for this party for days. 

“Lots of stuff,” Mike repeated, holding Jay’s gaze. “Adrienne, is that true?”

Jay was impressed that Mike had remembered her name, also annoyed. 

“Sure,” she said, shrugging one shoulder, still focused on Jay’s makeup removal. “He was such an angry little gremlin back then. We all thought maybe he was a serial killer.”

“She means that as as compliment,” Jay said, looking at her. “I think.”

“Of course! I mean, not _really_ a killer, you know. He just had feral creature energy.”

Jay’s face was raw and pink by the time she was done with her various removal procedures and tonics, and when she hugged Jay goodbye Mike didn’t ask to walk her to her car as an excuse to try and hook up with her. When she was gone, Jay was left alone in his Halloweened-out apartment with Mike, who was looking at him funny. 

“The hell are you staring at?” Jay asked.

“It’s a relief to see your normal face,” Mike said. “You made an unsettling zombie.” 

“Yeah, well. That was the idea.” 

Jay was almost tired enough to tell Mike to just come get in bed with him, not for sex or even cuddling necessarily but because he was too worn out to have any sort of awkward farewell, to the point that both of them passing out in Jay’s bed seemed less awkward, at least in theory. The Halloween lights that he’d strung around the apartment were still on, glowing from the walls and corners in shades of orange, purple and green, and _Exorcist III_ was still playing at a low volume in his viewing room, giving the whole place an authentically creepy sense of abandonment, like a movie set after shooting had stopped for the day.

“That shit she was saying to you was kinda fucked up,” Mike said. “Kinda pissed me off, actually.”

“What? Who, Adrienne?”

“She called you a creature? What the fuck was that? I don’t know what you looked like in college, but you were fucking adorable in high school.” 

“Mike.” Jay pinched his eyes shut and shook his head. “I looked like a underfed weasel in high school, and she wasn’t being mean, that was basically an endearment. You don’t know her, she’s weird. She likes creatures, they’re her favorite thing. What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” Mike asked. He was still wearing the devil horns. 

Jay was halfway between collapsing against Mike’s chest and screaming What the fuck do you _want from me_ in his face. The latter option was less tempting, because Jay was pretty sure Mike wouldn’t know how to answer. In the meantime Jay stood there weighing his options and swaying on his feet, considering the fact that he could also act like a grown-up and ask Mike to help him clean up all the empty beer bottles that were strewn throughout the apartment. 

“She missed a spot,” Mike said.

“What?”

“A spot-- There’s some fake blood still on you, here.” 

Mike reached for Jay’s left ear, touching the rim just gently at first, then using his short fingernail to scrape off some dried fake blood. Jay went perfectly still and tried not to acknowledge the fact that Mike touching him there was sending shivers down the back of his neck and across his shoulders, down along his arms. He’d be feeling it in his dick soon if Mike kept it up. Mike was leaning in close, eyes narrowed in concentration as he brushed away the last flakes of fake blood, stroking his fingertips along the rim of Jay’s ear and lighting up every sensitive nerve there in a way that had to be on purpose, like all of this. Jay had never even considered that he might like having his ears touched, of all things, or that it might feel this incredibly, weirdly fucking good. Had anyone ever touched him there, since medical exams in childhood? Maybe not, he thought, staring up at Mike and breathing too hard. 

“There,” Mike said, and he took his hand away. The loss of contact made Jay shudder, or maybe it was the way Mike looked down into his face when their eyes met. If Mike hadn’t been wearing those devil horns, Jay would have tried to kiss him, but the horns were just ridiculous enough to warn him off his own bad impulses, so he stayed in place, with whatever helpless expression Mike had just put on him by stroking his ear.

Do the other one, Jay almost said. Or anything, anywhere, please.

“You were, though,” Mike said. He took the devil horns off and put them on Jay’s head, squishing his hair down under the headband. 

“What?” Jay said.

“Adorable. In high school. Oh my god, on the couch, that night when we watched your movie at my house? You were about to vibrate out of your bones with terror, wanting us all to think you were cool enough to be there. I-- Yeah. It was so cute.”

“Fuck you,” Jay said, differently than the last time he’d said this to Mike, in the cemetery. Now it was soft, almost like he was begging. “You didn’t even recognize me when I came in for my interview.”

“Are you still mad about that? Sorry, just. By then it was like I’d dreamed you up in the first place. Never thought I’d see you again in real life. I’ve gotta-- Gotta go, but. You keep those. You need them more than me.”

“Those-- What?”

“Jesus christ, Jay, you’re asleep on your feet.” Mike touched the devil horns on Jay’s head, tapping the point of one and then the other. “Those.”

“Oh--” 

“I’ll see you tomorrow. Good party. All the little details and atmospheric stuff, it’s fucking impressive. You should have done set design or something. Maybe you still could. You could do anything, Jay. It’s not too late, for you.” 

“What?” Jay asked, sort of whining this out. He was so exhausted, and felt like he was missing at least half of what Mike was trying to tell him. 

“I’m being a little dramatic,” Mike said. “Sorry. But what she said made me think about you back then, in high school. I’d better get out of here while I still can. It’s funny, this--” He gestured around at Jay’s apartment, at the decorations and the screams coming from the movie playing in the other room. “Makes me feel like I’m leaving you alone in a graveyard.”

“Well. You’re not.” 

“It’s like how I used to walk you home at night, after the AV booth. Have you seen that movie _The Frighteners_? With the people with the marks on their foreheads? ‘Cause the bad guy’s coming for them next? And only Michael J. Fox can see that they’re in danger? It’s like that.”

“Mike--”

“Okay, all right, I know. I’m torturing you with inanity and it’s way past your bedtime. I’m going, bye.”

Jay thought he might at least get a kiss on the cheek, but Mike just left. Standing alone in his spooked-up apartment, Jay did feel a bit like he’d been abandoned in some dangerous situation, and he wanted to call out for Mike to come back. He wasn’t quite that gone, on Mike or exhaustion or beer, not even on the combination of the three, so instead he took off the devil horns, turned off the movie, and went to bed. 

**


	3. Chapter 3

His fantasizing about Mike had been intentionally muted up to that point, the things he wanted to think about kept as vague as possible, but after the ear touching he was unrestrained and insatiable. He thought about Mike fucking him when they were at the shop together, how the edge of the front counter would dig into his chest if Mike bent him over on it and rammed into him from behind. He thought about what Mike would say while thrusting into him, because there was no way Mike was quiet when he fucked. Mike would talk during the lead up, too, and the come down, and in Jay’s mind it was all unapologetic filth, even afterward, when he was sure Mike would stand back and make Jay hold his ankles so Mike could watch his come drip down Jay’s thighs, or maybe Jay just wanted that, the kind of shit he’d always scoffed at even in porn because who did that? Now it seemed so close at hand, like maybe all he had to do was ask.

The other half of his brain was occupied predominantly with convincing himself he was a fool to even think Mike would use him as a come dumpster, that everything he wanted to interpret as flirtation wasn’t just some joke or way for Mike to pass the time at work and while drinking. Mike didn’t touch Jay’s ear again, or remind Jay that he was still waiting to be dared to spend the night someplace treacherous like Jay’s bed. He did end up sleeping with someone who’d attended Jay’s Halloween party, though not Adrienne. This girl had been the date of Mike’s friend Paul, who later punched Mike at a bar for seducing her behind his back, which was the only reason Jay knew about any of it. Jay sulked privately and told himself it was for the best, that he’d rather maintain Mike’s respect than bend over for his dick, but the second he got his hand down under his blankets in bed he was ready to throw respect out the window if it meant he could just once know what it was like to be the person Mike wanted to fuck so bad that he was willing to get punched for it.

As Thanksgiving approached, Mike complained about the expectation that he’d have to spend time with his sister and her ‘bigot prick’ husband, who may have been the same guy who called Jay’s horror movie lame years ago. Jay was halfway joking when he said Mike could come home with him to Waunakee, where his parents had ended up after his sisters finished high school, and he sort of didn’t know what to do when Mike said sure, sounds good. 

Jay had never brought anyone home for the holidays before. His family already thought he was gay, which wasn’t inaccurate, but he didn’t want to talk about it and didn’t want them thinking, over motherfucking Thanksgiving dinner, that the guy sitting next to him at the table, the one he obsessively fantasized about, was dicking him down in real life. 

What actually happened was that Mike flirted with all three of Jay’s sisters, who laughed with musical synchronicity at his dumb comments and made no attempt to conceal that they were all charmed by him. Jay’s mother gave him several significant pitying looks, like she could see what was going on here and that it wasn’t a boyfriend situation and never would be, just a Jay pining in angry silence arrangement, as usual. Jay was in a bad mood on the trip home, and Mike having gotten drunk at dinner while Jay had to stay sober enough for the hour-long drive back to Milwaukee wasn’t helping. 

“That was so quaint,” Mike said when they were on the highway. “Who even has an actual happy family? The darkest motherfucker I know, of course.” 

“I’m not that dark,” Jay said.

“You can sit through the kind of shit that will haunt me for life without batting an eye, Jay. You’re dark.”

“What, movies? That’s not real life, it doesn’t mean anything.” 

“Bull-shit. It’s such a waste that you don’t want to translate anything to, like, your actual self. You’re a creative person. You could be living your wildest dreams if only you’d let yourself.” 

Jay knew he was talking about sex. He mashed his lips together and stared straight ahead at the highway, fuming. Mike probably thought Jay wanted to be tied up and whipped in a sex dungeon. Or that he wanted to do the whipping. He didn’t know the kind of intimate, soul-warping humiliation Jay actually got off on. In theory, anyway. 

“I just want you to be happy,” Mike said, suddenly sounding like he might cry. 

“I am happy,” Jay said, hearing how unconvincing he sounded-- though it was true, mostly.

“You’re like a timebomb. Have you heard that song? I got a timebomb! In my mind, Mom!”

“Please stop singing.”

“I hear it ticking and I don’t know whyyyy!”

“Mike, I will push you out of the car--”

“I got it bad for a, uh--I don’t remember that part, but then it’s like-- He’s gonna kill me, and I don’t mean soft-ly!”

Jay fumed in silence until Mike stopped singing. Mike reached over to poke Jay’s arm. 

“I mean I wouldn’t even want to be in _town_ when you finally go off,” Mike said, still poking. “It’s gonna flatten the entire Milwaukee area.” 

“What the hell does everyone think I’m gonna do?” Jay asked, too loud to pretend he was maintaining his cool. “Huh? I don’t have to be like the rest of you to still be a fucking person! Jesus!”

“Whoa,” Mike said.

“Shut the fuck up, Mike. Don’t analyze me. Don’t even look at me.”

“Okay, okay. Who am I kidding, I want to be flattened by the Jay-bomb. Aim it right at me.” 

“You’re disgusting and you don’t know when to quit.”

“Those are your two favorite things about me, Jay.”

Jay wasn’t prepared to find that funny and therefore had a hard time concealing that he was suddenly on the verge of insane laughter, the kind that would turn into sobbing if he let it go on long enough. Mike snickered under his breath and Jay broke, just a little, his shoulders jumping and the corners of his mouth twitching upward, nose wrinkling.

“Yeah, see,” Mike said. Jay could hear the beaming grin on his face. “You can’t stay mad at me, Jay. We have an unbreakable bond. I used to be afraid to scare you away, did you know that? In the dark, in that room at school. Then you popped back into my life like a fucking ghost and I was like, what was I waiting for? This kid loves being scared.”

Mike fell asleep in the passenger seat not long after that. Jay gripped the steering wheel with both hands, so hard that he was shaking a little, and spent the remainder of the drive vacillating between wanting to kill Mike and wanting to reach over to stroke his cheek while he slept. Ultimately he just dropped Mike off at his apartment and they parted ways for the night as usual.

Either because he’d eaten too much or hadn’t had enough to drink, Jay lay awake for a long time in the dark of his bedroom that night, staring at the ceiling and unable to sleep. What had Mike been talking about, being afraid to scare him back then? What was Mike ever talking about. It didn’t matter. Jay grit his teeth and told himself he wasn’t going to jerk off to Mike, but then he did it anyway, imagining that they’d pulled the car over to have a real fight, a fist fight, and that Mike had slammed him onto the hood of the car, knocking the breath out of his lungs, then climbed on top of him to kiss him. 

In the fantasy, Jay was dizzy and Mike was huge above him, obscuring the whole night sky. He flipped Jay onto his stomach and dragged him down so his feet were on the ground and his mouth was open on the hood of the car, hands pinned against it and somehow still pinned even after Mike released them so he could tear Jay’s pants down, also his own. Mike didn’t need to be holding onto any part of Jay in particular to keep him in place. As soon as Jay knew where Mike wanted him, he stayed.

Would Mike really fuck somebody on the hood of a car, pulled over on the side of the highway on Thanksgiving night? Would he even fuck a guy? Jay? It didn’t matter. In the fantasy the whole car rocked on its axles when Mike fucked into Jay, lube-less because it wasn’t reality, and Jay beat his fists against the car for how much liked it, hating himself for rocking his hips back to get more of Mike’s dick, because of course Mike would slap his ass and laugh while taunting him for being a slut. 

It was extremely tame, for one of Jay’s angry Mike fantasies, but he came pretty fast anyway, still keyed up from the long drive with Mike in the passenger seat, sleeping with his legs splayed open as widely as possible. 

Jay dreamed about the AV room that night, when he finally got to sleep. In the dream, there was only one chair. Mike told Jay to sit in his lap. 

“You think I’m such a baby,” Jay complained, but then he did it anyway. Mike felt huge underneath him, and without hesitation he pulled Jay’s legs open so they were hanging on the outside of his own spread-apart thighs, opening Jay up toward the wall of monitors, which was now a wall of cameras. 

“This is broadcasting live,” Mike said, murmuring this into Jay’s ear while he stroked his hands up along the insides of Jay’s thighs, squeezing him there. 

“To what?” Jay asked. He didn’t want to get hard again, he just came, though he couldn’t remember when or why. 

“My dreams,” Mike said, and when he laughed his chest shook against Jay’s back in a way that made Jay moan and arch to feel more of it.

When Jay woke up he was achy with arousal. He spent almost the whole day in bed, like he was recovering from some illness, napping between angry jerk-offs. He kept wanting to go back to that same dream, to think again that it was really happening, but couldn’t.

December was miserable, snow-packed and gray, and right before Christmas Mike had to drive up to Michigan in a raging blizzard to help his sister leave her husband. Some kind of crisis had arisen. Mike didn’t offer the details and Jay didn’t ask, though he did offer to go with Mike and help in whatever way possible. He’d liked Mike’s sister, back in high school. She was hapless but nice. Mike said no to Jay’s offer of company and told him to look after the shop instead, as if they had any repair work waiting. He didn’t say that he wouldn’t bring Jay with him because driving up there in that weather was dangerous, but Jay knew that was why. 

Jay sat in the shop by himself while Mike was away, miserably cold and alone, wearing a hat and gloves indoors because the cold outside bled in through the badly insulated old building. He was already sick to his stomach with worry, and this went on for three days with no word from Mike. Cell networks were having issues in the storm, and Mike never called or really considered Jay’s feelings anyway, at least in the sense that he didn’t seem capable of understanding that Jay could worry about him, too. He always acted like Jay was a lunatic if he so much as sent a text asking if Mike got home okay if they got separated at a bar and Mike had been shit-faced the last time Jay saw him. 

Jay locked up the shop on Christmas Eve and drove out to his parents’ place, which took twice as long as it normally did because of the road conditions. He tried not to think about Mike wrecked on the side of the road up in the Michigan hick countryside where his sister lived, freezing to death with no cell signal. By Christmas dinner he was such a wreck that his youngest sister was holding his hand under the table while she poured him refills of wine that he didn’t really want. She was the smartest of his sisters and probably the only one other than Jay’s mother who had realized at Thanksgiving that Jay was in love with Mike. Jay sipped at the wine miserably and couldn’t get drunk enough to forget that he’d hooked his heart on something that could tear free from him in any number of ways, at any time, taking most of him with it.

On the day after Christmas he woke up early and groped for his phone. The noise he made under his breath when he saw a text from Mike was very embarrassing, though he was alone and Mike would never know. Mike’s text was just a picture of what looked like a shitty tray of food from a hospital cafeteria. 

_the fuck is this_ Jay sent, angry entitlement flaming in his chest the moment he knew Mike was at least alive. Then, regretting that, he sent: _are you okay?_

Mike of course took three hours to respond. 

_Oh I’m fine_ was what he finally sent. 

_Are you still in Michigan?_ Jay asked, not bothering to wait more than three seconds to reply. 

_Yes we are in a shelter here. MERRY FUCKIN CHRISTMAS oh boy. One for the record books. Anyway. Bringing her home tomorrow. I won’t be in to work for a few days._

Jay was still struggling with how to reply to that when Mike sent another message:

_Kiss your sisters for me_.

Jay sniffed, staring down at this in disbelief, though also this was so predictable, very Mike. What an asshole. He went to take a hot shower and caught himself smiling like an idiot under the water for like ten minutes straight.

He didn’t see Mike for almost a week, as Mike was busy making arrangements for his sister’s new life in Milwaukee, which ultimately amounted to her moving into Mike’s tiny apartment with him. During this adjustment period Mike called the VCR repair shop two or three times a day to harass Jay, which was thoughtful and appreciated. At least once a day he’d be doing some bad voice on the phone, pretending to be somebody else.

“I was lead to believe this was a sex chat line,” he said at one point, doing a slurring old man voice that was better than his other attempts. 

“So what do you want to chat about?” Jay asked, glad that Mike couldn’t see him grinning.

“Well, young man, how familiar are you with anal beads?”

“Extremely.”

That got a laugh out of Mike, which felt like the best thing that had happened to Jay in weeks. 

Mike finally came by the shop on the day before New Year's Eve. It was almost three o'clock in the afternoon, and he had his sister with him. She had a fading black eye and was very happy to see Jay, though he didn't know how she could possibly remember him. He was just a nothing kid to her back then, some guy at one of Mike's parties. 

"I totally remember you!" she said when he said it was okay if she really didn’t. “We used to watch your movie, the scary one with the missing girl.” 

The way she said ‘used to’ made it sound like she and Mike had watched it together more than once, which couldn’t be right. Mike was avoiding Jay’s eyes when Jay glanced at him in confusion. 

“I see you kept the place from burning down,” Mike said, shuffling through some fast food wrappers on the front counter as if he was looking for something to eat. Mike had a bruise, too, on his jaw. Jay wanted to jump over the counter and kiss him there, everywhere. When their eyes met it was like Mike knew this and maybe wanted it, too. Jay held Mike’s gaze, testing this theory, and when Mike didn’t look away Jay felt something shift in his stomach. It wasn’t just the Taco Bell he’d had for lunch. It felt much better than that, warm and fizzy.

While Mike’s sister was the shop’s tiny bathroom, Jay took Mike in the back and showed him the work logs from the past few days. It wasn’t much, and he knew Mike didn’t really care. It was slightly warmer in the back room, or Jay was just feeling hot across his cheeks, suddenly. 

“I’m so fucking tired,” Mike said, quiet enough so that his sister wouldn’t hear.

“I know,” Jay said, without thinking. 

He was afraid that had sounded dumb and presumptuous: of course he didn’t know. But Mike was standing close and looking down into Jay’s eyes like it had been the perfect thing to say, the only thing he’d wanted to hear. 

“I don’t like--” Mike sighed and checked over his shoulder before turning back to Jay. “Don’t like this feeling that somebody can just grab my life and derail it with impunity because I love them.”

“Me either,” Jay said. 

“It’s why I’ll always be alone.”

“Me too.”

For a second Jay was so sure Mike was going to lean in and kiss him that it was like it was already happening, then they heard the toilet flush and Mike moved away, rubbing his hand over his face like he was trying to wake himself up. He cursed when his hand came to the bruise on his jaw. Jay flinched toward him stupidly, but Mike had his back turned, was done with whatever that moment had been, and his sister was coming out of the bathroom anyway. 

Mike seemed to recover instantly, but Jay was still flustered, only half listening as Mike’s sister made small talk with him in the front room while Mike checked his work email on the shop’s ancient computer. Jay’s heart was still pounding from hearing Mike say he loved anyone, even his sister. 

“Big plans for tomorrow?” Mike asked Jay when he stood from the computer. 

“Tomorrow?”

“New Year’s Eve, Jay.”

“Oh, right. Uhh, no. I might go to the bar, some people are getting together for the usual shit. You want to come?”

Mike groaned in answer, as if Jay had asked if he wanted to help him move. 

“You should go!” his sister said. “Don’t stay in on my account. Seen enough of you for the past week.” She winked after saying so. 

“I don’t have the energy for all those fuckheads,” Mike said. He scratched at the stubble on his jaw, close to the bruise, shrugged and looked at Jay. “Maybe I’ll come by your place before you head out. We could have a beer and watch something.” 

Jay had to suppress the enormous grin that wanted to break across his face, because he already knew if Mike came over with beers neither of them would make it out to the bar. Once they had each other’s company, everyone else was optional, extraneous, eventually an impediment, and having Mike fall asleep on his couch to ring in the new year sounded glorious after the angst and boredom of the past ten days without him. Jay debated whether or not to tell Mike he would make dinner for the two of them. He was definitely going to do it, but didn’t say so just then, fearing it might inspire Mike’s sister to invite herself along. Jay felt for her, but she seemed okay enough to spend the night by herself at Mike’s place, and Jay needed Mike, too. He had known this prior to their separation, but was still shaken by how bad it had been to go so long without him, like living in an alternate reality where nothing of consequence could possibly happen. Now he wasn’t sure how he’d survived the thirteen years between high school and finding Mike again. 

Maybe he hadn’t, he thought, waving Mike and his sister goodbye as they headed out. Maybe he really was the ghost Mike had always been hoping to see. That would be one explanation for why Mike hadn’t kissed him yet. 

Jay bought groceries after closing up the shop, and spent the night curating what they would watch the following evening, also cleaning up a little. In in his mind it had already become a fucking date. He stared at himself in the bathroom mirror when he brushed his teeth and reminded himself sternly: okay, this is you, there you are. Nothing will happen.

Mike showed up for work the next morning in his Lightning Fast shirt, almost on time. Jay was waiting for him, sipping from a sugary seasonal coffee. A year from then, Jay would make a series of brutal new year’s resolutions that would mean he’d never touch the sweet stuff again, at least not in coffee. From then on he would always drink it black, no cream no sugar. A year from then everything would be different in a way that would look remarkably the same on the outside, Jay included. But he didn’t know any of that yet. 

“Let’s close early,” Mike said at two o’clock, when they’d already had a couple of beers at the counter, no customers or phone calls. They’d been talking sort of furiously about nothing in particular since that morning, like they both had a surplus of gushing energy that had built up while they were apart. It had started to snow pretty hard outside. 

“I got some stuff to make for dinner,” Jay said when they were walking to his place. He mentioned this to manage Mike’s expectations-- Or to warn him, more like, about what his own expectations were. “If you want.”

“You know how to cook?” Mike said, incredulous.

“Uh-huh,” Jay said. “Like, three whole things.” 

“Which three are those.”

“Fettuccine with cream sauce, chocolate chip cookies, and hamburgers.”

“Very wholesome. Which one are you making?”

“The pasta.”

“Sounds good. No one’s cooked for me in, uh. Well. I can’t remember how long it’s been.” 

Jay tried not to feel too giddy about the opportunity to cook for Mike. He used to make this recipe for his roommates when they were high, and they would fall all over themselves like it was the greatest thing ever. Jay had enjoyed the praise, but his roommates had never deserved the free meal. Mike did, though. He needed some taking care of. 

The movies Jay had picked for the evening, in the order in which he planned to screen them: _2001_ (good to have on in the background while cooking), _Big Trouble in Little China_ (festive movie to start really drinking while watching, after eating), _Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey_ (continuing the mood of the previous movie and also just because he felt like watching it; Mike could potentially veto this one), and finally _Ed Wood_, because they both loved it and it because the ending had the kind of optimistic in the face of reality despite everything mood that would be good for around midnight. 

“Your apartment is so zen compared to mine,” Mike said when he was sprawled on Jay’s couch with a beer, halfway through the first movie. “Especially now.” 

“How long do you think she’ll stay with you?”

“Fuck knows. It’s fine. No, it’s not. I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Good, me either.”

Jay smirked when Mike gave him a surprised little look, eyebrows lifted. Mike snorted and drank from his beer, then lifted it to toast Jay’s bottle.

“I really needed a break,” Mike said, muttering. “Thanks.”

“What are friends for.” 

“Hell if I know. When are you meeting up with those other guys?”

“Eh. I might not bother. Snow’s coming down pretty hard. Maybe I’ll just stay here and watch more movies. You could, too. With me.”

“I fully planned on passing out on your couch whether you went out or not, truth be told.”

Jay grinned and flushed and went to check on the pasta sauce.

They ate out of their laps on the couch while the first movie wrapped up. Jay had finished two beers while cooking and was working on a third. He had a dozen more in the fridge, plus a bottle of champagne for each of them and whiskey to mix with the remains of his holiday egg nog, if Mike wanted it. Jay was already feeling drunk when they started up _Big Trouble in Little China_, and he could see that Mike was, too. They’d both been drinking less in the past few weeks, in the absence of each other, and it felt good to kick back with no other assholes around to bother them while they got pleasantly wasted and busted out laughing at the absurdity of the movie, both of them leaning toward the middle of the couch like some new gravity was pulling them there. 

When the second movie was over, Jay told Mike what he wanted to watch next, which lead to a debate about the merits of the first _Bill and Ted_ versus the second one, which became an hours-long conversation about movies in general, nothing actually playing on the screen. This got them close enough to midnight that Jay popped open both champagne bottles and brought them in. Mike drank directly from his bottle, though Jay had set out two cheapo wine glasses. They hadn’t paused their conversation long enough to start a new movie, but they had both fetched refills while talking. The egg nog was gone, along with most of the whiskey. 

“Should I put the movie on?” Jay asked, hearing himself slurring. 

Mike put his thumb over the mouth of his champagne bottle and loomed dizzily into Jay’s space. He was bleary-eyed and grinning, looked genuinely happy. Jay had seen Mike drunk in lots of different ways, and this was his favorite. 

“What movie?” Mike asked, his voice going up a few octaves.

Jay busted out laughing, so hard that he could barely remember the answer to that question himself, and he was still cracking up when Mike tipped over onto him, also laughing. Mike flopped down into Jay’s lap, his shoulders bouncing and his head heavy on Jay’s thigh. He came very close to spilling the champagne bottle all over the couch.

“Mhm,” Mike said when they’d both caught their breath, mostly. He rubbed his face against Jay’s thigh like this was a thing they did, no big deal. “Jay. I missed you.”

“Yeah?” 

Jay touched Mike’s ear, rubbing at the slightly elfin point of it in the way he’d fantasized about having Mike touch him ever since that ear-stroking incident on Halloween. He was sober enough to understand they were crossing a line but not enough that he felt like there was any reason not to, or any reason to fear that either of them would ever want to go back. 

“Jay.” Mike grabbed Jay’s knee and used it for leverage when he lifted his head, just enough so he could drink more champagne. “Yeah, I, uh--” He collapsed into Jay’s lap again, more completely this time, and shifted onto his back so he could blink up at Jay, eyelids heavy. “I really missed you,” he said, reaching up to touch the scruff on Jay’s cheek. 

“Does this still hurt?” Jay asked, and he brought his fingers carefully to the bruise on Mike’s jaw, stroking him there. 

“Nah, it’s nothing. You should see the other guy.” 

“Did you kill him, Mike.”

“No. Unfortunately. But I was thinking-- I _did_ think, while I was kicking his ass-- There are two people on the planet I would kill for. My sister, probably, but not really out of choice. And you, definitely. I would kill a man for you, Jay.” 

“Jesus.” Jay laughed and felt his face getting hot. Mike was still touching him there, clumsy but tender, stroking his knuckles along the too-soft line of Jay’s jaw. “Who do you think I want you to kill?” Jay asked. “You think this’s something, I, uh. Want, from people? Murder?”

“No. I was thinking about, if someone hurt you. Like that.” 

“Why?” Jay endeavored to be offended. He wasn’t some fragile, luckless person. 

“I guess just because I think about you all the fucking time, no matter what I’m doing.”

Mike sat up abruptly enough to startle Jay, slung his arm around Jay’s shoulders and pulled him close. He was still holding the champagne bottle, and he nestled it against Jay’s chest when he swooned in to kiss him. Despite being drunk, Jay would never forget several things about this moment, including the way the cold champagne bottle against his shirt made him shiver as he opened his mouth for Mike’s tongue.

“I don’t know the first thing about how to do this with a guy,” Mike said when he pulled back, before Jay was ready to stop being kissed, also before he’d entirely figured out what was happening. “So you’ll have to show me,” Mike said, shifting the champagne bottle in a way that dragged it over Jay’s stiff nipple and made him shiver again.

“Yeah,” Jay said, and he climbed into Mike’s lap, straddling him and pushing his shoulders back against the couch, too excited about the opportunity to show Mike what kind of sex he wanted to realize that Mike thought he’d done this before with a guy, with anyone.

Mike wedged the champagne bottle between the couch cushions so that it was precariously upright and put his hands up under Jay’s shirt like he’d been waiting to do so. Jay moaned and squirmed uncomfortably, because Mike’s hand was cold from the bottle and because he didn’t want Mike feeling his unappealing chub so directly. He grabbed Mike’s wrists and pulled his hands down. Mike got the idea and gripped Jay’s hips, squeezing, his fingers already inching toward Jay’s ass. They were kissing again, wet-lipped and breathing hard against each other’s mouths. Jay brought his hands up to Mike’s face and cupped both his cheeks, moaning when he felt how warm they were. Mike was blushing for him, holding him close and already getting hard against the seat of Jay’s pants. He felt big, there and everywhere, and he tasted like egg nog and whiskey with a champagne overlay, like every kind of excess that Jay wanted to evaporate into.

“Oh fuck,” Mike said when Jay pressed his ass down against Mike’s dick as if he knew what he was he was doing. He at least knew what he wanted, and he rolled his hips again while staring into Mike’s wide-blown eyes, smirking at how gone Mike looked already. “Jay, you. You don’t even know.”

“What don’t I know?” Jay liked this, how Mike was treating him like he was in control, as if Jay’s head wasn’t spinning from whiskey and want.

“How I--” Mike reached down and squeezed Jay’s ass in both hands as if to demonstrate, and when Jay groaned Mike echoed him, pressing his dick up to meet the shameless downward roll of Jay’s hips. “How I want, want to. You, just. The way you look at me, like. Sometimes, ah.” 

Mike was getting emotional or something. Jay kissed him to put a stop to that. He didn’t want to wreck this with confessions or make it too real yet. He wanted it to be like when he and Mike trashed the remains of an old set after wrapping up a high school theater production. Other theater department kids had been kinda into it at first, but by the end they were all standing back like they were a little afraid of how gleefully Mike and Jay were kicking the shit out of things they’d worked themselves to the bone to build. Jay didn’t need to explain to Mike why it was cathartic. He saw the answering mania in Mike’s eyes and knew he understood.

“Remember when we busted up the Little Shop of Horrors set?” Jay asked, breathless for how much he wanted to still be talking to Mike while they did this, somehow. “In school?”

“Jesus.” Mike grinned and pushed his hands up under Jay’s shirt again, just enough to make Jay moan out a warning when they settled on his waist. “Yeah, you. You unleashed your psychopath energy that day, I recall.”

“So did you!”

“Mine’s different from yours.”

“Uh, what? How?”

“Gonna show you,” Mike said, almost growling this out as he surged up to kiss Jay again. His grip on Jay’s waist was so tight that it hurt a little. Jay didn’t mind. He liked it. 

“Take your dick out,” Jay said, finally drunk and emboldened enough to just ask for what he wanted.

Mike made a kind of helpless, gut-punched sound, and then his eyes got bright. 

“You take it out,” he said. “If you want it that bad.”

“Mine?” Jay said, his face flushing deeper. He’d fantasized before that Mike made him strip bare for a hard fucking and refused to take any of his own clothes off while administering it.

“No, mine.” Mike opened his legs wider, spreading Jay’s apart in the process. “Go ahead,” Mike said when Jay shifted back to stare down at the bulges in their jeans. 

Jay’s hands shook when he reached for the button on Mike’s jeans. Even in Mike’s lap, with Mike’s arms around him and the taste of Mike’s mouth buzzing on this tongue, he felt like he shouldn’t be allowed to do this, like they were breaking some law of nature which stated that Jay could never actually have this much of what he wanted. 

“Fuck, yeah,” Mike said, his voice dropping low in the way Jay had known it would when he was turned on. They were both watching and breathing hard as Jay pulled Mike’s zipper down, and they both exhaled heavily when Jay reached into Mike’s opened fly to feel the heat of his fucking enormous dick through the thin fabric of his boxer shorts. 

“Oh fuck you’re really big,” Jay said, not bothering to conceal the naked terror in his voice. 

“Here, I’ll--” Mike cleared his throat and shifted under Jay, reaching for the button on Jay’s jeans. “Yeah?” he said when Jay lifted his gaze to meet Mike’s. 

“Uh-huh,” Jay said, his heart slamming. They were acting like nervous teenagers who’d never been touched like this before, and in Jay’s case this was too close to the truth to not make him shake all over as Mike pulled his pants open. Jay leaned in for another kiss, wanting to suck the air from Mike’s lungs like borrowed courage.

Mike was a good kisser. Not that Jay would know. But he was pushy and patient in just the right balance, grabbing Jay’s jaw to slow him down and also letting him slobber drunkenly at moments. Mike licked over Jay’s teeth like he’d been thinking about putting his tongue in Jay’s mouth for a long time and knew exactly what to do with it once he had. Jay whimpered and rocked his dick against Mike’s as soon as his pants were open, not caring anymore that he was doing all the stuff he swore he’d never do if he got seduced by anyone and especially by Mike: making lots of involuntary noises, moving with instinct and shutting off his rational brain, and letting someone see what a slut he was, deep down. 

Or maybe not so deep down. He was already moaning and fucking his trapped cock against the hot bulge of Mike’s, biting his lip in a futile attempt to keep his noises in. If he wasn’t so drunk he might have come as soon as Mike pulled his cock out through the slit of his boxers and reached into Jay’s to do the same, stroking his thumb over the head of Jay’s dick in a way that made Jay throw his head back and need to grab Mike’s shoulders to keep himself from falling out of his lap and onto the coffee table behind him.

“Fuck, you’re so--” Mike said, his voice doing that near-growl thing again. He brought his mouth to Jay’s neck and used his teeth there, still stroking Jay’s dick as he guided him forward, until their cocks were pressed together in Mike’s huge hand. 

“Oh fuck,” Jay said, for the hundreth time. He couldn’t make his mind work around any other words, couldn’t really do anything but hump his dick against Mike’s and rub his face against Mike’s stubble.

“Hang on, okay,” Mike said, holding Jay still with just one hand, which was clamped around Jay’s thigh. “Fuck, look at you.” He gave Jay’s mouth a quick, teasing lick and peered up at him, smiling. “I knew you’d be all, mph. Sensitive and overwhelmed.”

“Fuck you,” Jay managed, still trying to rut his cock against Mike’s while Mike held him in place, easily. “You, hah. You thought about this, huh? A lot?”

“Like you haven’t. Do you have lube? I wanna fuck you so bad. You broke my fucking brain, Jay. I don’t think about anything else anymore.” 

Jay dismounted and made his way to the bathroom on jelly legs, wishing he had been brave enough to buy real lube and a fake dick to shove up inside himself while he thought about Mike. As it was, he’d only ever used his fingers and hand lotion, which was what he brought back into the living room, his shirt tugged down over his hard-on. His throat went dry and his steps stuttered when he saw Mike sitting on the couch, his pants and boxers shoved down around his shins while he stroked himself and let Jay stand there watching, mouth hanging open. 

“Come here,” Mike said, eyes dark. “No, wait. Take your pants off first. Boxers, too.”

Jay had dared a peek at the bathroom mirror and saw that his face was on fire, and he felt his cheeks flush with new heat when he stepped out of his pants while Mike watched. Mike had spread his legs wide and was stroking his huge dick like he dared Jay to come closer. Jay was panting and barely containing a moan just for the sight of this as he flung his socks off, still holding the front of his shirt down over his cock, as if Mike hadn’t already seen it and jacked it in his hand. When he was naked from the waist down, Jay wanted Mike to ask him to crawl across the floor and suck his dick. He was that unchecked already, ready to do anything Mike told him to.

“C’mon,” Mike said, beckoning for Jay with one hand while he jerked himself loosely with the other. “What’s that?” he asked when Jay came closer, nodding to the lotion.

“Lube,” Jay said. 

“Hand lotion? That works?”

“Yeah,” Jay said, as if he knew. It worked well enough when he was squirming his own fingers into his ass, anyway. 

Mike took the lotion and set it aside, within reach. Keeping his eyes locked on Jay’s, he grabbed the neck of the champagne bottle and took two big gulps from it before sticking it back between the couch cushions. 

“Back in my lap,” Mike said, patting his thigh. “You can hump my leg.” 

“Oh god,” Jay said, part critical and part impressed. He straddled Mike’s leg and gasped at the skin to skin contact, first against his bare ass and then on his dick, when he tipped himself forward and did what Mike had told him he could, rubbing himself on Mike’s thigh like a shameless, obedient servant to his own lust-drunk brainlessness.

“Jesus,” Mike said, as if he hadn’t really expected Jay to do that. He held Jay in one big hand, gripping his waist. He still had his other hand on his dick but wasn’t stroking himself. He looked incredibly hard and Jay wondered if he was worried about coming too soon. 

Wondering this made Jay need to kiss Mike again, and when he leaned in to do it he half expected to be rebuked, because maybe Mike would be bossy and a little mean during sex, the way he was in Jay’s fantasies. But Mike didn’t recoil or laugh at how eager Jay was to clumsily press his mouth to Mike’s again. Mike kissed him back like he was desperate for it, too, moving his hand from his dick so he could cup Jay’s jaw. 

“This isn’t how I thought tonight was gonna go,” Jay said when Mike nuzzled at his face like he was newly drunk from kissing.

“Bullshit,” Mike said. When he met Jay’s eyes that darkness was there again, and it sent a long, lurid shiver down Jay’s spine. “You knew,” Mike said, giving Jay’s waist another near-painful squeeze. “When I looked at you in the shop yesterday, fuck. You had this look on your face like you were gonna beg me to put you on your knees.”

“I did not,” Jay mumbled, knowing Mike was right.

“Mhm, Jay, fuck. The best thing about you is that you don’t know what you look like when you look at me like that.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Jay said. He kept remembering how drunk they both were, then forgetting again.

“You look, like-- Fuck.” Mike exhaled sharply through his nose and pushed his hand through Jay’s hair. “Like my little. You know.”

“I do not know. What?”

“My little, uhh.” Mike grunted and pulled Jay closer, so he could put his mouth against Jay’s ear. “My innocent little farmboy who’s secretly hungry for cock.”

“Oh my god.” Jay leaned back and laughed hard at that, fists over his mouth. 

Mike made a face like he was hurt or something, like he’d thought that was some kind of brilliant observation. Then he grinned and slapped Jay on his bare ass. He looked very pleased with the answering noise Jay made, which was a kind of choked-off hiccup of interested shock.

“I never lived on a farm, Mike,” Jay said, blushing all the way down to his chest for how much he’d liked that ass slap. Maybe he’d liked the cheesy attempt at dirty talk, too.

“You did so,” Mike said, frowning. “Or, it was-- What? A farmhouse, right? Once? That house I used to walk you home to.”

“Mhmm, yeah, but--”

“You know what the fuck I mean, Jay. Whether or not you lived on, like, a functioning farm.”

Jay started to laugh again, and stifled it when he saw the look on Mike’s face, which was now less hurt and more pissed off. A shiver moved across Jay’s shoulders for the thought of what Mike would be like during angry sex. Jay liked the idea but could in no way handle that right now. He pressed his lips together and made his face as serious as possible.

“I wasn’t innocent,” Jay said. 

“Fuck that, you were.” 

“Well. Maybe, a little. But I’m not now.” 

“Yeah? Prove it.”

Jay had to decide if he should slip down onto his knees and take Mike’s dick in his mouth or grab for the lube and just impale himself on Mike so they’d finally be connected in the way Jay thought about all the time, too. His ability to reason was sluggish at best and his heart was beating very fast. Ultimately his fear that he would be bad at sucking cock won out over his fear that sitting on Mike’s dick was going to hurt like hell, and he reached for the lotion. 

“Oh shit,” Mike said when Jay brought his lotion-slicked hand down to Mike’s dick. Jay stripped his hand up and down the shaft, which was as ridiculously thick as it was long, getting Mike ready for him and watching his face as he enjoyed it. Mike’s chest was heaving, and he looked kind of scared, too, when he met Jay’s determined gaze. “You, yeah. _Unh_, Jay. Fuck, um, are you gonna--”

“I don’t have any condoms,” Jay said, meaning: yeah, I’m gonna.

“Don’t need one,” Mike said. “Not gonna get you pregnant, so.” 

Jay didn’t like that joke. He supposed Mike always used condoms with women, and anyway was drunk enough to trust him completely. He put his hand on Mike’s throat and felt him swallow, the soft bump of it against Jay’s palm making him groan. He squeezed a little and grinned when Mike’s eyes widened. Jay was still holding Mike’s throat in his hand when he lifted up onto knees and lined himself up with the head of Mike’s dick.

“Fuck,” Mike said, voice choked off by some kind of emotion, not actually by Jay’s grip on his throat. Staring up at Jay, he looked awed. Jay felt invincible, held in Mike’s gaze like that and lowering down onto him, until the head of Mike’s dick actually started pushing into him and made him remember how soft and small and untested he was.

“Nn, hang on,” Jay said, and he pulled off, grabbing for the lotion. He avoided Mike’s eyes as he squirted a huge dollop of it into his palm and reached back to smear it over himself. When he pressed his fingers inside he felt too tight even for that, but it also felt good, and he fell forward with his head on Mike’s shoulder while he tried to hurriedly open himself.

“Oh holy shit,” Mike said-- Whispering, which would have made Jay laugh if he wasn’t concentrating on making it so that taking Mike’s dick wouldn’t kill him. 

“Fuck it,” Jay said, still hopelessly tight around his fingers, which were only pushed in a little anyway, shallow and not-enough, just like always. He exhaled and brought his hands to Mike’s shoulders before reaching back and lining himself up again. “I’m just, gonna--”

And then he did, pressing his hips down and letting gravity take care of the first brutal push. He threw his head back in a pained shout that didn’t even make it halfway up his throat, choking off there and coming out only as a kind of death rattle croaking sound. 

“Hey, hey,” Mike said, or maybe had been saying-- Jay was approximately halfway down his dick and couldn’t focus on anything but his determination to keep chasing this searing, aching fullness that was making him grit his teeth, eyes pinched shut. His cock was drooling pre-come all over the front of Mike’s shirt, still hard and throbbing in answer to every new sting of pain. Mike was soothing hands up under the back of Jay’s shirt, kissing his neck and looking somewhere between frightened and worshipful when Jay forced his eyes open and peered down into Mike’s face.

“Shut up,” Jay said, biting this out with his jaw still clenched. “Just, just--”

“Take it slow, man-- You, you’re. So, so fucking tight, how. Just, _mhm_, god, Jay--”

Don’t tell me what to do, Jay thought. He couldn’t make his voice work. His thighs were shaking so hard, and he was sweating under his shirt but still didn’t want to take it off and let Mike see how soft he was, not even while Mike was inside him like this. It was an incredible, constantly morphing pain, like nothing he’d ever known. He wanted more of it even while he felt sure he’d break apart, because he wasn’t big enough to contain this feeling.

“Jay,” Mike said, and Jay could hear him trying not to insensitively moan for how good Jay’s agonizing, too-tight descent felt on his dick. Mike was shaking a little, too, maybe from the effort of not thrusting up to get the rest of himself into Jay as quickly as possible. His hands were on Jay’s waist again, very gentle now, just barely gripping him. 

Jay sobbed out a kind of victory cry when he finally settled himself all the way down onto Mike, every muscle that was even remotely involved throbbing with the effort of getting that far. He collapsed against Mike’s chest, feeling boneless with exhaustion and so full he was probably gonna die from it. He didn’t care, just wrapped his arms around Mike’s neck to hold himself in place. 

There, he thought, tremors moving from the base of his spine upward, making him clench in involuntarily pulses around Mike’s dick: now it was done and couldn’t be undone. Whatever happened next, he knew what this was like now. 

Mike was murmuring soft nonsense in Jay’s ear, telling him how he good he felt and cursing under his breath like he couldn’t believe this was reality either. He hugged his arms around Jay’s back and stroked him over his increasingly sweat-damp shirt. Jay moaned and shifted, groaning when it hurt in a way that made his cock twitch against Mike’s shirt.

“C’mere,” Mike said, and he coaxed Jay into a sloppy kiss. Mike sucked at Jay’s bottom lip while Jay mostly just panted against Mike’s mouth, occasionally pressing his tongue out for a responding lick. Mike’s eyes were weirdly soft, like maybe he was going to cry. Jay’s eyes were leaking at the corners just from exertion, or disbelief, or something.

“Fuck,” Jay said, the first real word he’d managed to push out in what felt like a while.

“Mhmm.” Mike reached up under Jay’s shirt to stroke the small of his back. “You, oh. God, you’re so hot.”

“Hot?” Jay blinked at Mike and understood what he meant: literally, he was sweltering hot around Mike’s dick and in general, sweating like crazy.

“Jay,” Mike said, staring at him with some kind of weird sweetness, like he felt sorry for Jay or something.

“Wha-- What.”

“I can’t. I can’t tell you, like. _Ngh_, god, I don’t think, um. I mean. I’ve never fucked someone I love before, so--”

“Stop,” Jay said, muttering this against Mike’s mouth, and then they were kissing again.

Later he wouldn’t be sure why he said this. He was of course drunk, stuffed with cock to the point of barely being able to breathe, and insecure about being pitied for wanting this so much that he wanted the pain, too, but he was also so in love with Mike that it felt like the only thing left inside him aside from Mike’s dick, and he was okay with this, okay with everything as long as he could stay connected to Mike like that, safe in Mike’s arms while he tried to get his breath back.

The kissing felt like saying ‘I love you’ anyway. Jay let it go on and on, until his lips were puffy and his mouth felt soft from overuse. Mike’s cock was starting to feel something near to good inside him. Jay was twitching his hips just a little while they kissed, testing the friction that was beginning to send licks of sharp heat up his spine. 

“I could stay like this forever,” Mike muttered. “What?” he said when Jay laughed.

“Is that my, ah. Cue to start moving?”

“No.” Mike frowned and tightened his arms around Jay’s back, squeezed. “I meant it.”

“Oh. Weirdo.” Jay kissed the tip of Mike’s nose and moved up just a little, hissing when it hurt on the down push. 

“Careful,” Mike said, whispering again.

Jay snorted and pumped himself upward again, less carefully. This time he moaned as he came back down, and froze in place when he felt Mike’s cockhead dragging over his prostate. His whole body jerked when he did it again, the feeling snapping through him so hard that for a second he thought it was an orgasm.

“Oh jesus,” Mike said. “That’s, you--”

“Hang on,” Jay said, bracing his hands on Mike’s shoulders and trying to find that feeling again. He whined when he couldn’t get the angle quite right. “Hang on, just--”

“I’m hanging, I’m on.”

“Mike!” Jay almost laughed, his chest bouncing once, then whimpered when it hurt. 

“Sorry, sorry. I’ll stop talking.”

“Nuh, no--” Jay reached for Mike’s mouth and pushed the fingers on his clean hand inside. Mike moaned and sucked on them, grinning. “Keep talking,” Jay said.

“With your fingers in my mouth?” Mike said, voice muffled by them.

Jay pulled his fingers out and tugged on Mike’s hair. He gasped when Mike jerked up into him a little bit in response, probably an involuntary reaction. 

“Every time I think about this I picture you fucking me so hard,” Jay said, still moving on him and beginning to almost entirely like it.

“Oh god.” Mike shook his head. “You can’t tell me that.”

“Why not.”

“‘Cause I’ll do it, I want to--”

“You will, I’m gonna let you. Almost ready.”

Mike kissed him. Jay laughed into it, because Mike was also sort of whining, and his hands were scrabbling at Jay’s sweaty back like he didn’t know what to do with them, suddenly.

“Can I squeeze them just once?” Mike asked when Jay pulled back.

“Huh?”

“The, uh, your--” 

Mike lifted his hands to Jay’s chest and hovered his palms just over where his peaked nipples were visible through his shirt, which was damp and clinging to him. 

“Oh god.” Jay bit his lip and shrugged, embarrassed. “Okay, once.”

“Fuck,” Mike said, breathing this out when he grabbed Jay’s soft pecs and rubbed circles over Jay’s nipples with his thumbs. Jay refused to think of them as his tits and would bite Mike if he dared call them that. 

“Mmph,” Jay said, hating how good it felt to have his nipples touched even through his shirt. He was sensitive there, and was clenching up around Mike’s dick for the feeling, his eyes falling shut. “Mike--”

“Okay, just. One more second, please, um. Can I go under your shirt?”

“No! I’m all sweaty. Stop, you’re done.” 

Mike removed his hands obediently, grabbing Jay’s biceps instead. They both tried not to laugh and failed. Jay moaned for how good it felt to be cracking up while Mike was lodged inside him. Suddenly, rapidly, everything was feeling so good, like some pain-fueled drug that naturally ran through his bloodstream had kicked in.

“See, you’re a contradiction even now,” Mike said, beaming at Jay like he loved this about him. “Being a prude even while you fuck yourself on my dick.”

“I’m not a-- I just know what I like.”

“Seemed like you were enjoying that, but okay. Mhm, _fuck_ yeah, keep-- Keep going, please, like that, ah-- And what do you like, Jay?”

“This,” Jay groaned out, riding him. 

“Obviously, fuck. _Yeah_, that’s-- I mean, though-- Where, where do you want me to touch you?”

Jay swallowed heavily when one thing in particular leapt into his mind. He was rocking himself down onto Mike at a steady pace, and felt like he might come soon, dragging his dick against Mike’s shirt. The fabric chafed a little, and he wondered if Mike would let him go under his shirt and hump his bare stomach.

“Touch my ears,” Jay blurted when he couldn’t hold it in anymore.

Mike’s eyebrows went up. He started to grin, sharky, but clamped his lips around it, maybe because Jay was glaring at him, daring him to bring up Halloween and how Jay had learned that he liked having his ears touched.

“God, you’re just how I knew you’d be,” Mike said, reaching for Jay’s ears with both hands. 

“How, what-- Oh--” Jay melted against Mike when his fingertips stroked over the rims of Jay’s ears just right, soft and teasing, lighting him up there and making him roll his hips faster, harder. “Mike, how. How’d you think, I’d. Ah, yeah--”

“Like this,” Mike said. “Surly and pushy and fucking sweet.”

“I’m not-- _Nhhh_gh, yeah. Don’t stop.” 

“Yeah, there you go. Fuck, Jay, hah-- See, that’s-- That’s what I mean, right there. Just gotta push the right buttons and you crumble like a cookie for me.”

“You drunk asshole,” Jay said, laughing. “Use your mouth.”

“Yep, and there’s-- Your other button, yeah. The one that gets you calling me an asshole even while I make sweet love to you.”

“Oh, god. Don’t call it that. Please, your mouth, on my--” Jay moaned the rest out wordlessly when Mike sucked on his earlobe as requested. 

Between that and Mike’s fat cock feeling increasingly amazing in his ass, Jay felt close to coming but also frustrated by the shakiness in his muscles and the ache in his thighs as he dragged himself up and down, always needing more but seeking something else, too. It was taking a lot out of him, doing all the work, and he wanted something that was solidifying at the pit of his stomach, wanted to just lie back and let Mike have him. 

“Mike,” he said, tugging at Mike’s hair.

“Mhm?” Mike was licking Jay’s left ear, dragging the point of his tongue along the rim and making Jay whine for how good it felt. 

“Put, can you put, um. Put me down on my back, please?”

“Jesus.” Mike shot upright and looked Jay in the face, eyes wide and dark. “Yes, I. Yeah. Jay.”

“What, Mike, what--” Jay was starting to lose it, felt like he might cry or something for how much wanted to sink fully into this, to just surrender. 

“Nothing, um. Well--”

“Don’t give me a speech right now, please, I need--”

Jay snapped his mouth shut before he could let himself say out loud that he needed to be fucked, hard, now, please.

Mike must have read it all from his eyes anyway, because he pushed Jay down onto the couch and was fucking into him before he’d even fully gotten his balance, snapping his hips hard already. They both groaned for the better angle, and Jay lifted his legs up, opening himself up as wide as he could and whining in a near-constant keen for how good it felt. He held Mike down onto him, keeping as much of Mike as he could closed into his arms and legs while Mike pounded him. It would hurt so bad in the morning, maybe even in an hour. Jay didn’t care. He was pure adrenaline and so close to coming that he would have let Mike do anything. He imagined Mike taking a bloody bite out of his ear or his throat and shuddered all over, came. 

“Oh fuck,” Mike said. “Jay, jesus, fuck, that’s-- You--”

Mike lost his words and just fucked into Jay harder. They were kissing, kind of, and Jay’s ass was oversensitive as his orgasm faded, making him hiss and arch, his legs still clamped around Mike’s back. It was good pain, being used like that, by him.

When Jay felt Mike go still overtop him and start to come inside him, his cock so fucking big that Jay could feel every pulse of it distinctly against the raw rim of his ass, he tried to settle his spinning mind on what his high school self would think about this moment: he’d made Mike come, Mike was coming inside him, so deep inside him that it was like some part of Mike would never not be in there. It felt like the fulfillment of some kind of destiny, especially when Mike made a soft noise on the end of his orgasm and collapsed down onto Jay like he wanted to be held, like Jay wasn’t already holding him tight in every way he physically could. Mike nosed at Jay’s throat and sighed there, his mouth open and wet while he tried to regain his breath. His massive chest was heaving down against Jay’s in a way that made Jay’s bones ache, and he never wanted to not ache like that.

“I’m out of shape,” Mike said, his face still hidden against Jay’s neck. “Also, fuck. The room’s spinning, um. I really don’t want to puke on you, Jay, but--”

“Oh god!” Jay shoved him out too fast and scrambled away. “Go!” he said, pointing to the bathroom, still flushed all over and covered in his own come. 

Mike didn’t actually puke. He came back from the bathroom fully dressed and looking repentant. Jay had wiped at himself with damp paper towels in the kitchen and put his boxers back on. His shirt was come-smeared and he was shaky, already sore, taking slugs from his bottle of champagne while he sat on the couch. Seeing Mike with his pants zipped up and his shirt come-free made Jay wish he’d put his own pants back on, because why the fuck hadn’t he?

“Sorry,” Mike said. “It was, um. That pasta sauce, and the egg nog--”

“Jesus, I don’t need an autopsy. Are you okay?”

Mike nodded sheepishly. He looked around the room and scratched at the back of his head. 

“It’s after midnight,” Jay said when Mike met his eyes again.

“Well.” Mike cleared his throat and gave Jay a deer in headlights look that Jay could imagine every woman Mike had ever fucked seeing just like this, when he was done with them. “Happy new year?”

“Yeah.” Jay gulped down more champagne. He had never so rapidly gone from drunk and reckless to feeling like an idiot. He wanted to be drunk again, at least.

“Sorry I fucked that up,” Mike said, wincing. “Um--”

“You didn’t,” Jay said, instead of: which part? “It’s fine.”

“Do you still want to watch the movie?” Mike asked, looking desperate. 

“What movie?” Jay asked, sincerely. 

“The one we were talking about, or. _Ed Wood_?”

Jay couldn’t remember if he’d told Mike that he wanted to end the evening with that movie or if Mike had just guessed correctly. He got up and put the DVD on, then went into his bedroom to change into a clean shirt and fresh boxers, as more of Mike’s come had leaked out of him while he was sitting there.

When he emerged, Mike was sitting on the couch looking like a scolded kid. He'd been drinking from his champagne bottle and it was half empty. Jay sat beside him and lifted his bottle in Mike’s direction so they could toast to the start of an epically fucked-up 2012, if the way they’d rung it in was any indicator. 

“Can I put my head in your lap?” Mike asked after he’d finished his bottle.

“Okay,” Jay said, keeping his eyes on the movie.

Mike thunked the empty bottle on the coffee table and moved over toward Jay with a grunt. He was so heavy, even just his head and the arm he slung across Jay’s lap, but Jay liked the weight of him and felt a little better for being able to touch him again. He ran his fingers through Mike’s hair, and they laughed hardest at all the same parts of the movie, at the ones they both loved best, just like always. 

“Jay?” Mike said when Jay was close to falling asleep, his head tipped back onto the couch cushions. 

“Yeah?”

“You okay?”

“Of course I’m okay. You’re the one who almost hurled.” 

“I was-- It was, you know. The thrusting.”

“Oh god. Yeah, I know.” Jay dragged his fingertips over Mike’s scalp, scratching him there until he moaned a little and put his hand over Jay’s knee. 

“Can I sleep here?” Mike asked.

“Sure,” Jay said, heart sinking, because he took that to mean the couch, whereas Jay would of course go sleep in his bed. The two of them would barely fit on the couch, if one of them wasn’t on top of the other, and why would Jay sleep on his fucking couch if his bed was right there in the other room? Mike was just trying to get ahead of the fact that Jay would want him to join him in bed. Jay wanted to fall asleep with Mike wrapped around him, with the reassuring heat of him pressed up behind his aching ass. He was dozy and almost brave enough to ask, just to make sure Mike would rather sleep out here, alone. He’d thought finally getting fucked would make him more confident, but the opposite felt true so far.

“I want to make a movie with you,” Mike said, as _Ed Wood_ neared its beautifully manufactured, not-true happy ending. 

“Okay,” Jay said, wondering how much of this Mike would remember in the morning.

“I’m serious.” 

“Sure, Mike.” 

When the movie ended, Mike was asleep, poured across Jay’s lap and somehow heavier than he’d been while awake. Jay extracted himself carefully. If Mike woke up, Jay decided he’d attempt some kind of subtle hand gesture or head tilt that would indicate Mike was welcome in his bed, just in case. 

Mike didn’t wake up, just drooled against the couch cushion in place of Jay’s leg. Jay bent down to kiss him on the cheek, having a sinking feeling that he’d never get the chance again. He went to bed alone after taking a long shower, everything aching. Even his arms hurt. As soon as his head hit the pillow he was out.

In the morning he woke up late, sore and hungover and alone. He could feel that the apartment was empty before he walked out to check the couch, but still took it like a gut punch while he stood there staring at the two empty champagne bottles, the come-stained couch cushions, not so much as an indent left behind where Mike had slept. 

He thought of texting Mike to ask him what the fuck, then immediately vetoed the idea. It would be a tell, like blinking first. Anyway, what had he expected? Mike’s memory of the evening probably tapered off somewhere in the middle of _Big Trouble in Little China_. 

Jay scoffed at how thematically appropriate that film was, by accident. It was about something big being in something little: ha ha ha. Had his subconscious done that on purpose? He felt disgusting and stupid and used and like he half-remembered Mike saying he’d never fucked someone he loved before, had that really happened? He supposed the Mike-less scene before him and the lack of texts or calls from him as the day sluggishly lurched onward should answer that question. 

The repair shop reopened for the new year the following day. Jay showed up to work expecting to brawl with Mike, because in some weird way it felt like they had fought. Mike just smiled at him when he walked in the door, half an hour late. Jay drank from his sugary coffee and didn’t smile back. It would take him another year of wallowing, gaining weight, and developing a worsening drinking problem to reach the place where he would make his resolutions, and most of 2013 to actually see any results.

“I wrote this yesterday,” Mike said, throwing a stack of papers onto the counter as he took his seat beside Jay. 

“Uh,” Jay said, staring at it. His heart started slamming. Was it a love letter? An official statement about the events of New Year’s Eve? 

“Read it,” Mike said. 

“Do I have to?”

“Yes, Jay, do it.”

Jay grabbed the papers and did his wary semi-snarl thing at them, not sure if he was relieved or not when he saw that it appeared to be the first draft of a movie script.

“We’re really gonna do it together this year, Jay,” Mike said, looking a little insane when Jay glanced over at him. Mike had bags under his eyes, like maybe he’d stayed up all night writing this. “We’re gonna make a real movie. Me and you.”

“And you’re gonna write it?” Jay said, not sure if he was more offended by this assumption or the fact that Mike either didn’t remember or want to talk about the fact that they’d fucked. Jay was still sore from it, though not as bad as the day before.

“You can contribute, obviously,” Mike said. “That’s just some initial ideas, you know, uh. It’s a horror comedy.” 

“Yeah,” Jay said, thinking that was a pretty good description of his life in general. “Who’s gonna act in this.”

“We’ll hold auditions!”

“Where’s the money going to come from, in that case?”

“Eh, we’ll figure it out. I have some ideas for funding. Leave it to me.” 

Jay couldn’t make himself focus on the script pages. His eyes kept wanting to blur over, and he was scanning between the lines, looking for some coded message to him, something like: sorry, I don’t know what to do, please tell me?

None of that was on the page or in Mike’s eyes when Jay looked up at him. Mike looked excited about this idea and about the concept of making a movie with Jay. If he also looked desperate to pretend everything was still okay between them, Jay didn’t see it. He just saw somebody who understood unsaid things that Jay didn’t, someone who still moved in a well-armored space in the distance that Jay would never reach, no matter how many milestones he managed. 

“So?” Mike said. “What do you think? You in?”

“Sure,” Jay said, though he hadn’t managed to absorb a single word of Mike’s script. He would do what Mike wanted, like he always had. What alternative was there? This was what made him happiest, even when it also made him want to sink into the floor and evaporate.

He held on to this desire to disappear for a full year before he figured out what to do with it. He would have to shed himself like an exoskeleton, and it wouldn’t be easy, but the bitter satisfaction he’d get from watching Mike see it happen, little by little, would be the most immense evil pleasure of his life.

**


	4. Chapter 4

Jay had always been practical. The first thing he did, on the miserable one-year anniversary of being fucked by Mike, was open a new savings account for his teeth-fixing fund. Lightning Fast didn’t offer any benefits, so he would have to pay for the whole thing himself. According to his calculations, it would take him all of 2013, living even more frugally than he normally did and probably taking on a second job, but he would do it. The slap in the face of another New Year’s Eve left him with nothing but stone cold conviction. 

Mike hadn’t fucked him again or ever brought it up, and in the meantime had started dating a girl who played the piano at the old-timey lounge in the city where they sometimes went ironically. So, fuck him. Even though Mike was still Jay’s best friend, rarely spent more than ten hours away from him at a time, and they were making a movie together. Fuck him, all the same.

Jay told himself he wasn’t doing this solely because Mike didn’t want to fuck him a second time. There was also the matter of no one else seeming interested, and the teeth had bothered him since before Mike had ever spoken to him. He wasn’t just going to fix those, he’d decided, because why bother if the rest of him was going to look the way he currently did? He had to lose weight and stop drinking himself stupid with Mike every night. He had to pick his whole trampled, lonely, self-despising soul out of the gutter before he turned forty and it stayed there for good.

He had eight years to accomplish this but was optimistic that he could do it in two, at least according to his savings and Invisalign schedule. This was shoved forward almost instantly by the fact that losing weight was easier than he’d expected. He was powered by rage, which he assumed was helpful. Having Mike there to give him judgmental stares for eating salads only brought him a sense of vengeful glee. 

“What’s different?” Mike asked when Jay came into the shop after getting the Invisalign installed in May. He’d made a hefty down payment and would be paying the rest off while wearing the thing. Also, embarrassingly, his parents had given him three thousand dollars when his sister told them about his sad attempt to save money on the VCR repair salary. 

“I haven’t even opened my mouth yet,” Jay said, though in saying so, of course, he did. “How can you tell?”

“Tell what? What’s going on, Jay?” Mike leaned toward him, frowning. Jay gave him a hammy fake smile and then smashed his lips shut. He felt his face getting pink. “I don’t get it,” Mike said, blinking at him. 

“Braces. Go ahead and give me shit for it, get it out of your system.”

By then they’d gotten into the habit of savagely making fun of each other on a regular basis. It was fine, good, normal friend stuff. The frustrations involved in attempting to make a movie with no budget contributed to this more than the fact that they were both harboring some kind of secret angst about that time they’d fucked, Jay liked to think.

Mike just stared at Jay like he needed a moment to think of the best possible braces-related joke. Jay got his coffee-- black now, always --and took his place at the counter while Mike continued to sit there looking lost. 

“Where’d you get the money for that?” Mike finally asked.

“None of your business.” 

“Jay, we basically share finances.”

“Uh, what? No, we don’t.”

“The movie, though. We share the financial burden of that, do we not? Are you holding out on me, not wanting to invest in our vision?”

“Oh, fuck off.” Jay secretly hated the movie, but loved working on it with Mike enough to devote all his free time to it anyway. “My parents,” he said, muttering this from the corner of his mouth. 

“Ah, of course.” 

Jay wanted to punch him for that tone. Was he supposed to apologize for having parents who loved and supported him? It wasn’t like he was trying to suggest that life was fair.

“So if they’re willing to invest in your oral health--”

“No,” Jay said, glaring at him. “I feel shitty enough taking money for this from them. They’re not going to invest in the movie.” 

The movie’s working title was _Cult of the Snake Princess_. Every time Jay vetoed a bad dick joke in the script, Mike came up with three more. 

“Well,” Mike said, after he’d stewed in silence for a while about Jay’s access to money. “I like your teeth how they are.”

“Good, ‘cause they’re gonna be like this for a year. Then the braces come off and they’ll be normal.” 

“I meant--”

“I know what you meant, and who asked you? Don’t be a dick to me today. This shit hurts.”

“What hurts?” Mike asked, looking startled. “The mouth apparatus?”

“Yes, it hurts for like three days, so just accept my shitty mood and tread lightly.”

The dentist had actually said the pain would probably subside by the end of the second day if not the first, but Jay wanted to milk Mike’s sympathy for as long as possible. Mike still had a soft spot for looking out for him, and if Jay had so much as a cold Mike would go from haranguing him to coddling him in a blink.

As the last of winter melted away, Jay stuck to his plan and felt his already baggy clothes grow functionally useless as he shrank within them. Instead of drinking beer with Mike at the shop as the work day died down, he had water or more coffee, and after work he went to the gym instead of the bar. This meant he was home by seven or eight o’clock, watching movies alone and eating a bland grilled chicken breast for dinner, but even the austerity of his social life felt like part of the bright future he was preparing himself for. He started washing his face before going to bed and rereading old books he’d liked in high school. When he had trouble sleeping, possibly because of all the coffee he was drinking in lieu of beer, he pored over the movie footage from their weekend shoots and tried to make something of it with his edits, sometimes just staring with angry longing at the stretches where Mike’s character looked particularly good.

Often during these nights alone he would get drunken texts from the bar, from Mike. The texts were a combination of incomprehensible nonsense and jokes that were uncomfortably arousing when Jay read them on his phone at three in the morning, wired and restless in bed. 

_Hey what are you wearing_

_Is it a shirt with a pumpkin on it_

_I bet it is!!!!!!_

_God it’s so boring without you here you lame fucking dieting fuck_

_Respond to me goddammit_

_I know you’re awake you vampiric motherfucker_

_Creature of the night_

_Jay you’re like that girl in the fairytale with the hair_

_You need to be unleashed_

_Released_

_Remember when we talked about you exploding and you yelled at me_

Jay ignored most of Mike’s drunk texts as a rule, and never mentioned them the following day, as revenge for the things Mike had never texted about or mentioned, but in this case he finally had to reply. Otherwise this might go on for hours. Mike seemed unhinged.

_Aren’t you with someone?_ he sent, thinking of Mike’s girlfriend, if that was what they were calling her now. 

_Ha!! I knew you were awake_ was Mike’s obnoxious reply. 

_Yeah, you know me so well, Mike_, Jay sent back, before he could stop himself. 

When Mike didn’t immediately reply, Jay let himself type more, snarling at his phone screen:

_You know every fucking thing about me, I could never suprise you, sure, right. So why then are you bothering ME at this hour of the night, if I’m so fucking predictable? Doesn’t that make me the boring one?_

He stared at this for a long time before deleting it. There was no point in tossing truths in Mike’s face via text or otherwise. He dodged them at every turn. Nothing had brought home Mike’s delusional tendencies quite so much as trying to make a movie with him. Mike either thought the movie would be good or was pretending to so that Jay wouldn’t stop making it with him, which was itself delusional, unless Mike actually didn’t realize that Jay would do whatever he said for all eternity. 

By August they were taking a hiatus from shooting the movie because Mike had pissed off the lead actress. Though everything about the movie embarrassed him, Jay missed working on it and fighting with Mike about it. He grew in his mustache in an attempt to make his Invisalign less obvious, not expecting it to actually work or look good. When it did, to a kind of startling degree, combined with the fact that his time at the gym was actually giving him muscles and the highly reduced beer consumption had already drained his gut away, he started to notice his own shock over his sudden handsomeness reflected on Mike’s face, and at times he could tell Mike was struggling not to mention it. 

“Are you going to order a fucking garden salad to maintain your figure?” Mike asked when they were at the German restaurant together. It was still their tradition, on Jay’s birthday.

“Fuck no,” Jay said. “I’m eating whatever I want today.” 

He’d already had a bagel with full-fat cream cheese for breakfast, and had skipped lunch to save room for the huge meal he was about to consume. Every pretzel and schnitzel pictured on the giant menu made his mouth water. He’d mastered personal discipline, with a lot of help from the tray that had to be pulled off his teeth every time he ate, but hadn’t stopped craving salty, breaded, cheese-covered stuff.

Mike was staring at Jay when he looked up to ask him what he planned to order. They usually coordinated so that they could both have some of everything that was good.

“What?” Jay said, rearing backward a little when he saw the serious, fretful look on Mike’s face. 

“What’s the point of this,” Mike said, gesturing over the table at Jay in general. “I don’t see you out trying to get laid. Are you going out and trying to get laid without me?”

“Uhhh.” Jay felt his cheeks flame with heat. They hadn’t ever talked about him being gay. He’d muttered about it briefly to his youngest sister but otherwise thought it was nobody’s business, even if they’d had their dick up his ass once. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, though he knew. 

“Your swan-like transformation, Jay. The diet and the weight-lifting and the--” Mike reached across the table to wave his hand in Jay’s face. “This.” 

“This?”

“The teeth, the beard, the-- Skin, or whatever.”

Jay snorted and stroked his hand over his beard, trying not to smirk at Mike’s distress. 

“What about my skin, Mike?”

“You have this, like. Glow. Like you scrubbed something off. Did you sell your soul?”

“Yes, you caught me. Do you want to get the sampler platter thing? I’m fucking starving.”

They negotiated their order and Mike let the subject drop. Jay stuffed his face with German food and internally preened. Saying out loud that he’d noticed and was bothered by Jay’s progress from sad sack sidekick to good looking-ish guy who could conceivably go out and get laid was the greatest birthday present Mike could have given him, outside of a love declaration and his dick.

Jay hadn’t gotten laid since Mike. Nor had he tried. He couldn’t imagine kissing someone with this thing on his teeth, and didn’t want to kiss anyone except Mike anyway. He had considered that he might enjoy some other stuff with people who were not Mike, and thought probably too much about how badly he wanted to try sucking dick, tray on his teeth or not, but whenever he considered going to the gay bar that he drove past on his way home from work, he chickened out and went to go lift weights instead. No one had approached him at the gym, but he’d caught a few guys looking and was pretty sure a girl had been checking him out once, even.

They went to the bar to hang out with their friends after his birthday dinner as usual. Jay was toasted with shots, drinks paid for. Mike’s piano-playing girlfriend turned up at one point and hugged Jay when she told him happy birthday. Her name was Libby, and sometimes she looked at Jay like she knew everything, not angrily or even with pity but like they were secretly on some kind of team together. Possibly he was imagining it. She loved roasting Mike along with him, regardless. 

If there was a club they both belonged to, it was something to do with anticipating heartbreak. Libby was the first girl Mike had kept around for more than a few dates who seemed to not miss much, and as Jay moved toward an increasingly maybe-good place in his life, anyone who was paying attention could see that Mike was edging toward a less good one.

“I want to make a toast!” Mike bellowed once he was drunk, and everyone in their group froze with dread, even those who were also wasted. Mike was lifting his beer over his head, giving Jay a leering grin. “To the birthday boy. Jay. My little Jay from Orfordville, jesus christ. Look at you, you’re like a fucking man now or something. With a real beard and everything.”

“Yep, here’s to you!” Libby said, in a merciful attempt to shut him up. She gave Jay a wincing, apologetic smile and lifted her beer.

“No, no, hang on,” Mike said, waving his hand in her direction. “I’m not finished.” 

“Yeah, you are,” Jay said, clinking his beer bottle against Mike’s. “Thanks, uh. Everyone.”

“Everyone.” Mike scoffed wetly and drank from his beer. “Fine, I won’t say the rest. But I was _gonna_ say, Jay, that if you hadn’t walked into the repair shop that day, I don’t know, I’d probably be dead or something.” He laughed like this was a joke, and everyone stared at him uncomfortably. “So, yeah. I have, you know, a history of not working well with others, shall we say, but you’re the only person I’d ever make a movie with. There, that’s the toast. Everyone can fucking unclench.” 

Mike clicked his glass against Jay’s bottle again, then threw the rest of his beer back. Jay sipped from his and decided he was too drunk to do anything but sit there blushing. He hoped no one would notice. The lights in the bar were pretty dim, at that hour.

They both continued along these trajectories in the year that followed. Jay’s braces came off, his arms got bigger and his stomach became hard and flat in a way that felt like magic, even though he had done the work himself. He bought clothes that fit properly and fixed his hair, realizing in hindsight that everything about the way he styled himself had been embarrassingly childish for years. Relatives who saw him only once or twice a year were visibly jarred and told him he looked like a different person in congratulating, slightly suspicious tones. Friends who knew him well enough to understand certain things assumed he’d gotten hot as some kind of automatic physiological response to finally letting himself fuck dudes. He wasn’t actually doing that yet, but had come close a couple of times and was learning how to flirt. He preferred harmless flirting with women to the scarier and more consequence-laden flirting with guys, and the dweeby highschooler who lived on at the pit of him was still floored every time a pretty girl laughed at one of his bad jokes in a way that he’d once never dreamed they would. 

While this was going on, Mike gained weight and broke up with Libby, got back together with her, broke up with her again. In her absence, he fixated on _Snake Princess_ to an alarming degree, and Jay began to worry that when they finished the thing-- in another year or two, or ten? --Mike would have a nervous breakdown when it didn’t live up to his vision. 

They’d written around the original actress dropping out of the project by making the Snake Princess jump bodies and possess another character, a sympathetic young woman who then needed to be saved from the evil entity that was occupying her body. Jay had a fondness for this character, who had mostly been conceived of and written by him. Her name was Megan, which was a kind of joke in keeping with the movie’s corny humor and also a sincere homage. She was a scientist studying the Snake Princess’ powers and was supposed to be mousy and sweet. Mike had hired an actress who was totally wrong for the part, but Jay couldn’t really blame him. Nobody else had auditioned, and Mike wasn’t wrong that they had to start shooting Megan’s scenes rather than waiting indefinitely for the perfect actress, who was never going to do the role for the paltry fee they were paying.

“You’re so weird about women,” Mike said at one point when they were passive aggressively sniping at each other about this situation. 

“Fuck you,” Jay said. “Look who’s talking.” 

“No, Jay, I’m perfectly normal about women. Whereas you don’t even fuck them but you have all kinds of bullshit baggage about how they should be.” 

“She’s a hammy actress and totally not right for the part, what the fuck does have to do with how I supposedly feel about women?”

“You’re obsessed with this stupid character. I never should have let you write her.” 

“You never should have told Josephine she was giving off ‘cold fish energy,’ then we wouldn’t have had to fucking recast the Snake Princess halfway through.”

“Josephine is a prima donna. It was a perfectly appropriate note. She was never going to work for more than a few months for what we were paying her anyway. You’re deliberately changing the subject, Jay.” 

“What subject? Your unwanted commentary on my-- Whatever? Fuck off! You’re the one who’s trying to make this about irrelevant personal shit when it’s really a production issue.”

“That’s so typical, you saying that. Classic Jay.” 

Jay wanted to take a swing at Mike then, for real. They were on set after a long day, both of them sweaty and tired and feeling demoralized about the whole project. Mike was breathing hard and looking at Jay like he knew Jay wanted to throw a punch and like he would just fucking love to see him try.

This was the summer of 2014, over a year before they would fuck for a second time, but Jay could already feel something shift between them when he stood his ground and held Mike’s angry stare long enough to understand what he really wanted Jay to try to do.

As if Jay would give him the pleasure. He threw down the prop box he’d just packed and stalked off, annoyed by the fact that he could feel his nipples getting hard under his shirt despite the heat.

For Halloween that year, Mike brought a random woman to Jay’s party. They showed up at midnight, both drunk, and Jay told himself that he only felt betrayed on Libby’s behalf. Jay had run into her at a concert earlier that month and she’d told him, with a grimness that felt like a warning, that Mike talked about him, a lot, to a degree that she found distressing. 

“Like, he’s not right, you know?” she’d said, squinting at Jay and shouting this over the music and crowd noise. “In the head, I mean. He’s troubled. And you’re the bene-- Benefactor? That’s not the right word.”

“I know what you mean,” Jay had said. For her sake, because he’d grown to consider her a friend, he downplayed how happy he was to hear this. “Mike just wants an admirer, and I’m the most gullible schmuck he’s ever met. I fall for all his shit, I always have. That’s all.” 

“Hmm,” she said, and then their separate groups of friends had parted them. 

“I see you went all out as usual,” Mike said when he finally approached Jay at the Halloween party, after ignoring him for twenty minutes while he and his date got drinks. She’d disappeared in the direction of the bathroom. Jay was replenishing the beer cooler, which was coffin-themed that year. 

“You know me,” Jay said, annoyed by the fact that Mike wasn’t helping him transfer beers from the case and into the ice. “Slave to tradition.” 

“Don’t call yourself a slave, Jay.”

“Why not?” 

“Oh, it’s just, like, way too arousing.” 

Jay turned to sneer at Mike, assuming that was a cruel joke. Mike was wearing a Packers jersey, which felt like an insult, too. 

“Wait, let me see your thing,” Mike said. He grabbed Jay’s shoulders and turned him so he could take in the full effect of Jay’s costume. “Oh my god,” he said when he saw the front of Jay’s sweater, which was an adult-scaled replica of Danny’s Apollo 11 rocket sweater from _The Shining_. Jay had commissioned it months ago from a friend of his mother’s. 

He prepared to be laughed at and to tell Mike to fuck off, but the way Mike smiled at him made him smile back. It was a feeling Mike had always given him, even before they really knew each other, even when it pissed him off: this sense of being recognized at last. 

“Becky and her friend were supposed to come as the twins,” Jay said. “That would have been the real feature. But Becky’s boyfriend proposed to her, the asshole. And she got too busy doing wedding planning to figure out how to find matching dresses that look like--”

“This is amazing,” Mike said, touching the collar of the sweater, then the hem. “Did you _make_ this?”

“God no, my mom’s friend did. For a price.” 

Jay was hot all over, wondering if anyone had noticed Mike pawing at him. He kinda hoped so, because he was drunk enough to want stupid things.

“You even did the seventies hair!” Mike said, pulling back to beam at Jay with delight. He grabbed Jay’s shoulders and shook him a little. “You fucker. You’re always perfect.”

“Uh,” Jay said, forcing a laugh. 

“I mean-- You know what I mean.” Mike looked flustered. He let go of Jay’s shoulders and glanced down at himself, giving the Packers jersey a miserable tug. “This is-- I don’t know what I am. Lazy fat man, I guess. Which isn’t really a costume, for me. Whoops.”

“Who’s the girl?” Jay asked.

“I think she’s supposed to be Little Red Riding hood.”

“I meant-- Never mind. Are you hungry? No one’s eating the food this year.”

“Probably ‘cause you cooked health food or something, ya little freak.” 

Mike gave him an affectionate poke in the stomach after saying so, maybe to point out how firm he’d gotten there. Jay swooned on his feet like a fool, glad Mike had noticed. 

“It’s not health food,” he said, and then the girl was back, in her Little Red Riding hood cape, telling Jay the bathroom was out of toilet paper. 

“I used your hand towel,” she said, slurring. “But don’t worry, I threw it on the floor s’no one else will use it, and it was just pee.”

Jay gave Mike a look before departing to deal with this. Mike made a face like: yeah, okay, fair. 

By Thanksgiving Mike was back with Libby, and by Christmas they had broken up again, this time publicly. It happened at a bar, during a Christmas party, and involved a wine glass getting thrown at the wall.

“Why does she keep getting back with him?” Jay’s friend Sara muttered. She was leaning on Jay’s shoulder in a conspiratorial way while everyone watched Mike follow his again-ex out into the parking lot. Libby was the one who’d thrown the glass. 

“Dunno,” Jay muttered, though he did.

“Is the dick that good?” Sara asked.

She looked at Jay like he might know, then burst out laughing.

“It must be, yeah?” she said, shrugging. “She’s hot.”

“So is he,” Jay said, offended on Mike’s behalf. “I mean,” he said when Sara boggled at him. “In a way, you know. A midwestern schlub way.”

“Oh honey, no,” she said. “Not you, too.”

“Fuck off, you’re the one speculating about his dick.”

They slumped together and watched Mike sheepishly reenter the bar. He got his jacket and headed back out into the cold, but not before meeting Jay’s eyes in a way that made Jay want to get up and go with him, as if he had any right to involve himself. 

“You’re right, though,” Sara said when Mike was gone. “I’ve actually fucked him twice, truth be told. And, yeah, it’s good.” 

“Great,” Jay said, deflating. “Can we do shots?”

New Year’s Eve was always an especially miserable occasion for him, wistful regret flooding him too deeply for any amount of alcohol to displace. Whether he was alone or with others, he usually spent the evening wondering what he’d done wrong that night with Mike, or the morning after, or if there was no amount of doing right that would have made Mike not leave without saying goodbye and then never mention it again. He also had to wonder if Mike even remembered that it had happened at all, but something told him that he did, which was worse than the alternative, because Mike’s memory of it must have been very different from Jay’s if he didn’t want to ever talk about it, let alone do it again. 

For Jay it was such a sacred memory that he didn’t want to let anyone else inside him, not yet, not like that. Most guys he hooked up with were happy with blow jobs anyway. The logistics of fucking the way he and Mike had on the couch that night were too cumbersome and goofy to navigate without being able to laugh about it together the way they had. He didn’t want to do it again until he knew it would feel like that. 

Re-analyzing the memory was a reliable agony every year, and as he rang in the start of 2015 with his family, celebrating his youngest sister’s engagement and his oldest sister’s graduation from law school, he couldn’t manage any festive feelings except the one he always had, despite everything: he wished he was with Mike.

Shortly after midnight, he got a rare text from Mike: 

_This is the year we’ll finish our movie, Jay_.

Jay groaned, but he supposed that was wise. They were both chipping away at their souls by continuing to pretend the pile of footage and attempts to edit them would actually come to life as funny or scary or anything in between. The idea of not finishing it was worse. They needed closure.

_Sounds good_, he sent back. _Happy new year_.

_I hate this holiday_, Mike sent, and Jay wasn’t sure if that was supposed to feel like a commiserating kiss on his cheek or a boot between his shoulderblades, but he felt both, reading it. 

When Jay woke up on New Year’s day, he had more texts from Mike, these having been sent around four o’clock in the morning.

_I mean cause of the resolutions_

_and how shit only ever changes for the worse_

_I’ve only ever had one good new years eve_

There was a ten minute gap between that and the next message Mike had sent, which was also the final one:

_We should have done a time travel movie Jay_

Rather than scrapping everything and starting over on a time travel premise, they did what they could with the footage they had, reshot a few things that didn’t require any real actors, and started telling their friends they were going to screen it on April Fool’s Day, which was a kind of promotional tactic, because by then the movie was a running joke and nobody quite believed that an actual eighty-minute feature was going to emerge from their pile of shared angst. It would be fully in line with their sense of humor to screen eighty minutes of bizarre avant garde scream-static, and their friends were already taking bets on whether the movie would be real or an elaborate April Fool’s prank. 

This sense of doubt that the thing even existed was part of their plan to get people to actually show up for the screening, and in the final stages of editing they both actually managed to get excited for the premiere, if also terrified and filled with dread. 

They spent more time together than ever, hurrying back to Jay’s place after their shifts to sit together in the dark room where he normally watched movies alone, now transformed into a makeshift editing suite. Jay gained five pounds from eating dinner with Mike on a regular basis, late at night after they were both exhausted and little punch drunk, laughing at their own mounting nervousness over plates of nachos or cheese fries at Mike’s favorite bar. 

“I missed you,” Mike said two nights before the premiere, when he was hammered and watching Jay scrape melted cheese up with a tortilla chip. 

“When?” Jay asked, trying not to think about the last time Mike said that to him.

“I meant--” Mike shook his head and pinched his eyes shut. He looked annoyed when he opened them again, as if Jay had forced this confession out of him. “I missed this, uh. When we’d hang out and you’d not be counting calories.”

“Yeah, well,” Jay said, with his mouth full of nachos. “I’ll be off comfort food again after this screening.” 

“Was my house the first time you ever screened anything for a real crowd?”

“You know it was.” 

“Mhm.” Mike nodded and stared down at the remaining nachos. “You were so nervous. It was cute.”

“You’ve said that before. Do you ever lust after guys who aren’t me?”

Mike’s eyes snapped up to Jay’s, and it was like a bucket of cold water, sobering Jay up instantly. His tolerance had gone way down since he’d lost weight, and like a fool he’d been matching Mike beer for beer that night.

“Just kidding,” Jay said, wishing he could hide his face. He could feel his cheeks burning. 

“No, I-- It’s. A legit question.” 

“Please, it’s not-- Don’t-- Forget it.” Jay wanted a glass of something that wasn’t beer, but there was nothing else on the table. “I don’t want to jinx the movie by getting into that shit right now,” he said, avoiding Mike’s eyes.

“That shit,” Mike said. 

“Never mind, just-- I’m drunk. And freaked out, and I don’t even know why. It’s just our friends. It doesn’t matter. Like back then, at your house, when I showed my movie. It’ll happen and then it’ll be over, and nothing will change.”

Jay met Mike’s eyes then, begging him silently: please don’t, not now, I can’t.

Mike shrugged and finished his beer in two gulps. 

“Yeah,” he said when he’d thunked the bottle down again, not looking at Jay anymore. “Nothing changes, that’s true.” 

They were both silent when they walked home together afterward. The night was frigid and Jay was exhausted, yawning so frequently and forcefully that his eyes were watering a little. He let his shoulder bump against Mike’s arm a few times, his body seeking the heat of Mike’s even while the rest of him stayed carefully held back, on edge.

“I mean, no,” Mike said when they came to the place where they always parted ways.

“What?” Jay stopped walking and turned toward Mike as usual. There was a dusty snow blowing through the air, tiny ice crystals skittering across their faces as they blinked at each other and shivered in the wind. 

“No, I don’t lust after other guys,” Mike said.

“Oh. Well. Okay.” 

“Yeah, you should know that.”

“Now I do.” Jay nodded to himself and stared at the center of Mike’s chest. He wondered if he should just ask Mike to come up to his place and get in bed with him. Some part of him had been waiting for that ever since that night when they fucked, or maybe even before then, since the night they slept in a tent together at the edge of a graveyard. 

Jay dragged his eyes up to meet Mike’s. He made himself think about how awful it would be if they fucked or even just shared a bed and then had to sit next to each other during the movie screening and overlay whatever watching the final cut with an audience made them feel onto their relationship, not to mention all the days of sitting next to each other at the repair shop that were inevitable anyway, and would be easier without further complication. 

“It’ll be okay,” Jay said, not sure which of them he was trying to reassure.

“I know that,” Mike said, looking very much like he didn’t. “Maybe I don’t want it to be.”

“Huh?”

“Just okay, like always.”

“Mike. Then what the fuck do you want?”

Mike backed away from him, hands in his coat pockets. He was drunk; Jay was confident he wouldn’t remember this in the morning. Mike got very romantic when he was drinking, then didn’t want to deal with the fallout. 

“I had this terrible epiphany last night,” Mike said, just far enough away to need to almost shout, to be heard over the wind. “I didn’t want to tell you.” 

“So don’t.”

“No, I have to. But I’ll tell you after the screening, after we watch the movie.” 

As if they hadn’t watched it together a hundred times already, in a hundred slightly different cuts. 

Jay wore a t-shirt with bones on it to the screening, a cartoon skeleton mapped over the approximate location of his actual bones. He thought it was fitting, since he felt like he was about to reveal some horrible truth that would irreversibly expose him, as if their lame horror comedy was his very personal life story. For weeks he’d had reoccuring nightmares that when they put the movie on for their friends what actually played was a confessional documentary about his long history of being in love with Mike. 

Jay’s youngest sister was there with her fiance, and Jay sat with them during the screening. Mike was across the room, alone in an armchair and perched on the edge of his seat, angled toward the screen like he might have to leap up and physically alter the movie even now. Their venue was a friend’s house just outside of the city. They’d chosen it because their friend had a really big TV, which was mounted on the wall in a sprawling living room that almost comfortably fit everyone who had shown up. 

“Don’t take this too seriously,” Mike said when the movie started. He was staring at the screen and seemed to be talking to himself.

Ten minutes in, Jay was sweating under his skeleton t-shirt. The movie wasn’t good; he’d known this, but somehow hadn’t fully felt this reality until he experienced it in the presence of people who weren’t Mike. People laughed uncomfortably for the first twenty minutes or so, their reactions gradually trailing off into an unbearable silence. Mike got up at one point and returned to the room with a drink. 

None of the actors had turned up for the screening, which was a relief. Watching his own scenes was excruciating for Jay. He’d looked like shit when they shot this, pudgy and awkward. Mike had edited most of his own scenes out, which was a waste, in Jay’s opinion, but his opinion had not been listened to during the process. Mike was about thirty pounds slimmer in most of his scenes, and his delivery got the only two authentic laughs of the night. He was stone-faced while watching, meanwhile.

There was awkward applause when the movie wrapped up. Jay forced a laugh and allowed his sister to give him a consoling hug. 

Mike avoided Jay during the party that followed. They both drank a lot and made a lot of jokes at their own expense. Jay began to feel relieved about an hour after the screening, like he’d survived a dangerous passage through some treacherous body of dark water.

He passed out in a back bedroom shortly after midnight, too drunk to drive home. When he woke up in the middle of the night, Mike was getting into bed with him, his weight tilting the mattress so that Jay rolled toward him a little.

“Here,” Mike said, dragging a blanket up over Jay. “I found you,” he added, reeking of booze, his face close to Jay’s in the dark.

“I wasn’t hiding,” Jay said. 

“Sure you were. You’re afraid to hear my epiphany.”

“I’m not afraid of anything, Mike.”

“Hmm. Maybe that’s true. You did-- That one time-- Yeah. You’re probably the most fearless person I know, actually.”

“Great. Say your thing, then. I’m tired.”

Mike sighed. He was still so close that Jay could feel the heat of his breath, warm against his cheek. Jay kept his eyes closed, waiting to hear something awful. 

“Megan should have been you,” Mike said. “In the movie, we should have cast you as the person who gets possessed.” 

“By a fucking snake princess? Yeah, no. I couldn’t have done that convincingly. I can’t act for shit.”

“Sure you can, but it doesn’t matter. We needed someone innocent. You were so innocent-looking, in that thing.” 

“Keep getting off on thinking of me that way, I guess.” 

“Yeah, I will, thanks.”

“Why are you even telling me this?” Jay opened his eyes and glared at Mike. The only light in the room was from their friend’s fish tank, glowing against the wall opposite the bed. “You want to reshoot the movie?” Jay asked when Mike just stared down at him, looking distraught. “With me as the damsel in distress? Yeah, that sounds about right. For you.”

“Not a damsel-- No, just. You should have been the star, is all I mean.” 

“Thanks but no. Are you in here to sleep or just to drive me crazy?”

“I don’t think I can sleep,” Mike said, but he put his cheek down on the mattress, curled up on his side facing Jay, and passed out almost right away. 

Jay was the one left awake and agitated. He tried to envision the version of the movie Mike had suggested, where Jay played the imperiled person who was being devoured by a demon from within, and grudgingly came to realize that Mike was right. The movie would have turned out better that way, just because Mike would be directing his own fantasy of seeing Jay shattered and sobbing and begging for help, then saving him. 

In the morning they drove back to Milwaukee in separate cars. Jay slept off his hangover and went to the gym in the evening, still feeling fragile. He had the sense that he’d left something behind at the house where they’d held the screening, that it was lonely for him and hurt by his abandonment, like a kid he’d forgotten he had. He came home from the gym feeling wrung out and newly resolved to not slide back into his old habits, including squatting in Mike’s lap, though that wasn’t a habit so much as a thing he couldn’t stop thinking about, still, almost three years later.

There was no getting around his thoughts about that. It was the only habit he’d never break, but his resolve stuck in all other ways, and by summertime he looked better than he ever had and was starting to feel better, too. Despite the fact that he felt no conscious lingering angst over the project, he had almost nightly dreams about the Snake Princess movie, and these often devolved into dreams about Mike where they were trapped in a jungle together and one or both of them was in grave danger. Escaping the danger usually lead to fucking, but even these dreams felt like a useful compartmentalization of Jay’s untidy desires, and only when he was really drunk did he let himself think about Mike while sucking other guys off. 

Then he let someone else fuck him, which was a mistake, both in the sense that it was disappointing and that it made him pathologically desperate to get Mike inside him again.

The guy’s name was Tommy. He was the younger brother of one of Jay’s friends, two inches taller and five years younger than Mike, blandly handsome and uncomplicated. He begged Jay to show him the _Snake Princess_ movie and seemed to find it adorable that Jay kept refusing. The filthy text messages they sent each other were way more gratifying than the actual sex, which made Jay feel transported back into his old, awkward self, and like he was pretending to be something he wasn’t, particularly when he couldn’t come and had to keep apologizing for it while internally seething that Tommy insisted it was fine-- It wasn’t fine, he wanted to fucking come. After three attempts Jay had stopped hoping it would get better and had started thinking about how to end this thing without ruining his friendship with Tommy’s brother.

Mike could smell it on Jay even before he saw him and Tommy together. He didn’t say anything, but Jay could see it in the way Mike looked at him at the shop, suddenly with a different interest and sharpened attention. He knew Jay had been with someone else and he wanted to somehow forbid it without having to admit that he hated it. 

Jay had been in agony since his first fumble in bed with Tommy, wanting Mike again, instead, so bad that it physically hurt, and Mike’s misery at realizing what was going on made this feel almost like something they were going through together. Jay felt closer to Mike than ever in a twisted way, like they were the only two people in the world who had this crippling affliction of not fucking each other and not really knowing why but also being too scared to figure it out. 

The first time Mike and Tommy were in each other’s presence was like seasickness combined with orgasm for Jay. It was at a mutual friend’s backyard barbecue, toward the end of summer. Jay was wearing a tight shirt and feeling invincible, totally different from the way he felt when he was alone in bed with Tommy and just wanted to squirm out from under him and leave. Jay’s sister’s fiance had a boat, and he’d spent a lot of time on it over the course of the summer. His arms were tan and his hair was sun-kissed, glowing. He knew he looked good, and that Tommy looked good, and that Mike was staring. 

Jay was planning on getting rid of Tommy, but had to bring him to that barbecue first, so that all the uncomfortable flopping around in bed with him would be worth something. Though it made him feel unforgivably evil, it wasn’t like Tommy was in love with him. Part of the reason Jay couldn’t get off with him was Tommy’s fondness for the kind of degrading dirty talk that Jay liked in theory, and in their text message exchanges, but which Tommy delivered with a blunt sincerity that made Jay feel insulted, then pathetic for getting his feelings hurt by somebody whose opinion he didn’t even respect. Tommy’s favorite movie was _Gladiator_, for fuck’s sake. 

“So this is like a thing now?” Mike said when he cornered Jay at the party. He gestured with his beer at Tommy, who was across the yard talking to a girl Mike had slept with at least once. 

“A thing?” Jay said. His heart was already pounding. Mike’s cheeks were flushed from drinking and sun exposure, or something else. “What, me and him? No, not really.”

“Oh, bullshit. You never bring people to parties. You don’t have to pretend not to have human emotions, Jay.” 

“I’m not pretending anything. He’s Josh’s brother. We hang out sometimes.”

“Hang out,” Mike said. He scoffed and gulped from his beer. 

“What do you care?” Jay asked, wishing he’d gone easier on the beer himself. He felt a little lightheaded from the combination of heat and the excitement of Mike resenting him for parading his fuckbuddy around like a six-foot-three trophy.

“It’s just annoying that you do this shit and don’t tell me about it,” Mike said. “We’re supposedly best friends, but I never know what the fuck is going on in your life. Like, why? Why’s everything you go through gotta be some big fucking secret?”

“Oh, so you want to hear about which guys I’m screwing?” Jay said, dropping his voice and moving closer, getting sincerely angry. “And whose cock I’m sucking? Wow, okay, good to know. I’ll be sure to keep you up to date at all times.”

“Fuck off, you know what I mean.”

“Not really? Since when do you tell me about the women you fuck?”

“That’s-- It’s not the same.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“‘Cause it’s tacky to talk about women like that.” 

“Give me a fucking break. Like I even want to hear about you whoring yourself out to whoever’s still at the bar when the lights come on.” 

Mike’s eyes got wide. For a second Jay was sure he’d burst out laughing, or that they both would. Jay’s face was burning, and he could feel at least a few people at the party looking at them. They didn’t fight often, and tended to attract an audience when they did. 

“Wow, yeah, I guess you have _standards_,” Mike said. He looked at Tommy and snorted. “He seems perfect for the dumb jock normie you aspire to be now.” 

“Oh god, right. I’m the one who wants everyone to think I’m just a stupid asshole who doesn’t feel anything. You don’t project that shit onto me at all.” 

For half a second Mike just looked impressed. It was the cruellest thing Jay had ever said to him, and there was no fake joking behind it. He’d meant it, completely. Mike had probably thought Jay didn’t have it in him. Jay certainly hadn’t expected that to come out of his mouth just then, or ever. 

Suddenly it became clear that everyone at the party was staring at them. Without meeting anyone’s eyes, Jay went into the house and locked himself in the hallway bathroom. 

He felt like an idiot, but also kinda good. His heart was racing and his dick was a little hard, which was just fucked up enough to be amusing. It was like he and Mike-- They’d been in the middle of something real, finally-- And everyone had seen. Tommy, too. Jay groaned, pressed his palms against his eyes and tried to stop liking this. 

It was no use: without even realizing it, he’d always wanted to be at the center of this kind of party drama, somebody good-looking enough to be wondered and whispered about and semi fought-over by two different guys, both of whom were out there, pissed off at him and wanting him. Well, maybe only Mike was wanting him. But that was more than enough. 

“Dude?” Tommy said when he knocked. 

Jay was sitting on the closed toilet lid, where he’d been debating whether or not to beat off to this feeling for ten minutes. Tommy’s voice effectively killed his erection, as usual. 

“What?” Jay said, sharply, as if Tommy was the guy who’d done something wrong. 

“You okay? Sara said I should check on you.” 

That busybody! Jay smirked at the idea of her fuming for the sight of him having a public argument with Mike, whose dick she surely still drooled after. He remembered her claim that she’d had Mike twice, which was once more than Jay had, and stood to splash water on his face and give himself a bracing staredown in the mirror. He was drunk, and needed to eat something. Whenever he indulged in booze on the weekends, he cut back on food, and it had lead to humiliation before. 

He opened the door, grabbed Tommy and stood up on his tip-toes to kiss him there in the hallway. Tommy sputtered with laughter against his mouth. Jay never kissed him, not even during sex. He’d confided in Tommy that he didn’t give a fuck about kissing, which was true unless Mike was involved. Tommy had seemed relieved, like this meant Jay would be an especially low maintenence fuck. He seemed to truly not care that he couldn’t make Jay come, which Jay found astounding and even a little enviable, that Tommy was so secure in himself that he didn’t feel inadequate or insulted when his bedmate couldn’t stay hard. 

“When’d you get so trashed?” Tommy asked, squeezing Jay’s ass when they lingered there in the hallway, arms around each other. People were passing by on their way from the kitchen through the living room, back to the yard and vice versa. Jay couldn’t fucking wait until one of them told Mike where he was, what he was doing. 

“Let’s just go,” Jay said. “Fuck this party.”

“Did you fight with Mike?”

“Mike’s an asshole. He called me a normie.”

“Like-- A normal person?”

“Like I’m a freak who’s trying to act normal. That’s how he said it.” 

This was bothering Jay, outside of the drunken thrill of causing a scene. Did Mike really think he hated himself, still, that he was just pretending to be this new and improved person? As if Mike had room to judge anyone. But the whole ride home, with his face tilted into the wind through the open passenger side window in Tommy’s car, Jay worried Mike was right, and that the power of his right-ness would cause Jay to wake up in his old body, with his crooked teeth and beer gut, and the worst part about it would be that Mike wouldn’t want him anymore, just like Mike hadn’t really wanted him back then, because if he had, why had they only done it once?

Jay was welling up to actually cry about this by the time they got to his place. He shooed Tommy away so he wouldn’t see. Tommy didn’t need to be asked twice. He dropped Jay at the curb and peeled off without a care.

Nobody loves me, Jay thought later, hugging the toilet and wiping vomit off his chin. Only his family loved him, out of default obligation, just like high school. How had he designed his life this way, again? It was Mike’s fault, probably.

He was tentatively drinking water but hadn’t fully sobered up when he got a text from Mike:

_so I thought about your question_

Jay snorted and picked up his phone, weighing it in his hand. He wanted Mike to suffer, to keep wondering and worrying, but he also wanted to fuck with him more directly, so he replied.

_What question_

_if i want to know when you’re about to get fucked or suck some dick_

Jay just stared down at the phone after reading that, his mouth hanging open. 

_and the answer’s yes_, Mike sent. _it’s mandatory from now on. You text me first, if you’re gonna. And then i’ll tell you if you can or not_

Jay read this several times while sinking slowly to the floor, onto his knees, feeling like Mike’s hand was on top of his head and guiding him down.

_you’d like that wouldn’t you_, Mike sent. _begging my permission_

Jay stared at the phone and waited to know what to do. His hands were shaking and he was hard in his shorts, hot all over. He felt like he had a fever and it was building, building. Like he would die if this thing ballooning inside him wasn’t popped.

_Come over_ he sent, watching his thumbs move on the phone as if he was possessed, and then:

_Please_

He sat there on the floor, on his knees, his fingers twitching with the impulse to send it again, over and over: _please, please, please, please, please_\--

But he’d only needed to send it once. Though Jay wasn’t sure how much time had actually passed, as he felt like he’d slipped into another dimension as soon as he read Mike’s texts, it seemed like Mike got there after just a few minutes, before Jay had even decided what was going to happen. When he pulled the door open and saw the look on Mike’s face, he realized he wouldn’t have to make any decisions at all, that no part of this was going to involve analyzing his options or considering the consequences, and it was the biggest relief he’d felt in years.

“You’re totally out of control,” Mike said when he stepped inside, looming into Jay’s personal space before he’d even shut the door behind him. “Bringing that guy to that fucking party. Like I wasn’t gonna know why.” 

“I didn’t--”

Mike kicked the door shut. Jay stared up at him and didn’t bother with whatever else he was going to say. It was pointless to deny it, anyway. Of course Mike saw through him. Jay had wanted him to. 

“And then you got drunk and embarrassed yourself,” Mike said, grabbing Jay’s chin. He was backing him toward the bedroom already, or maybe they would just fuck on the floor. Jay moved where Mike wanted him to, without resistance, his head tilted back in Mike’s grip. “Now you’re begging me to put you in your place. Jesus christ, Jay. What’s gotten into you.”

Jay’s mouth worked stupidly, his face blazing from the thought of a bad joke he wasn’t going to actually attempt, something about what _hadn’t_ gotten into him recently being his problem.

Mike smirked like he’d heard him say so anyway. He shook his head. 

“You amateur,” Mike said, brushing his thumb over Jay’s lips. “You could have strung me along for three more years. Should have known you’d just need the tiniest nudge. Look at you, god. You’re gonna give me _everything_ I fucking want, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Jay said, breathing the word out like it had been suffocating him to not say it. He nodded and reached for Mike, grabbing the front of his shirt and pulling him closer. “Mike, yeah, you can, just--”

“The fucked up thing,” Mike said, bringing his face down close to Jay’s, “Is I always knew I could have you. I just loved you too much to do that to you.” 

“That?”

“You don’t want me to be nice to you anymore, do you?”

“Nice? No, you-- You’re not that nice--”

“You know what the fuck I mean. You’re always telling me to stop thinking about you like you’re innocent. Okay, yeah. I see how it is now. You’re really out there slutting around with god knows who the fuck. Waiting for me to notice. Of course you had to rub it in my fucking face before I finally got it, but I did, Jay. I’m with ya. You wanna call me a fucking whore? Now who’s projecting?”

Jay felt a soft thing at the center of him freeze up and turn to stone. It was for the best. He could have told Mike: I’m five years from forty and you’re one of two people I’ve ever slept with, actually. But it was true that he’d lost count of how many dicks he’d sucked in the past few years, and he didn’t want any part of himself staying soft while they did this, so he shrugged one shoulder and sneered a little.

“I guess you can treat me like you always wanted to now,” Jay said. “So go ahead.” 

There was a flicker of what may have been regret on Mike’s face, and then he spun Jay around and marched him into the bedroom like he was under arrest.

Mike pushed him onto the bed face first, and Jay thought about his often revisited fantasy of being thrown onto the hood of Mike’s car at night and fucked on the side of the road, mercilessly. He pushed his arms up over his head and hid his blazing face against his bicep. He was so hard, had been since those texts, and when Mike worked his pants open roughly he moaned against the sheets, thinking about how Mike was going to see how he’d soaked through the front of his boxers with precome while waiting for him.

“How many times did you let that douchehole at the party fuck you?” Mike asked. He tore Jay’s boxers down along with his pants, lowering them just enough to expose Jay’s ass, which felt more humiliating than being stripped naked and made Jay want to rub his sticky cock against the bed while Mike watched. “Approximately,” Mike added, kicking at Jay’s feet to make him spread his legs as much as he could with his pants around his thighs.

“Um, I-- Three, three times.”

Mike snorted. “I don’t mean just since you left the party. I mean--”

“Only three times, fuck you.”

“Wow, really? Okay, then.”

Mike slapped him on the ass, so hard that Jay didn’t even have the presence of mind to be embarrassed by the shocked, helpless noise he made. The sharp sting of pain boomeranged through him and shot along the length of his dick with a heavy throb, making every muscle in his body relax into a sponge-like surrender while he panted against the bed, hoping like hell that Mike would do that again. 

“That was for the first time you let him fuck you,” Mike said. There was a shake in his voice, like he’d scared himself or something. “You sorry yet?”

“No,” Jay said, only thinking that he didn’t want Mike to stop.

Mike grunted and spanked him again, possibly even harder. Jay cried out and fucked himself against the mattress when the intense pain-pleasure reverberation spiked through him again. He only dared two pathetic twitches of his hips before he whimpered and went still, both of his ass cheeks burning with the lingering sting of being smacked that hard.

“Oh, this is what you fucking wanted,” Mike said. He sounded both disgusted and pleased, hovering in perfect balance between the two just like he did in Jay’s sick fantasies. 

“Mike,” Jay said, his face still hidden against his arm. He arched his back a little, lifting his ass and asking for the third blow without needing any words. His voice was cracked already, weak and small. He sobbed dryly when Mike spanked him again, in a spot where he’d already struck, making the pain there worse and also so much better.

When Mike spun him over, Jay almost wished he’d said Tommy had fucked him ten times, or twenty, though it was as scary as it was arousing to feel Mike’s hand coming down onto him like that, and he was partly relieved to have his sore ass pressed against the bed rather than upturned for more. He sniffled up at Mike and blinked furiously, letting Mike see how hard he was for this, wet all down his shaft with pre-come. 

“Jesus christ,” Mike muttered. He licked his lips and scanned his eyes from Jay’s face down to his dick and back up again. He looked angry but also calm, a frightening combination that made Jay’s cock twitch, the pressure pushing out another fat bead of pre-come. 

Jay brought his shaking hands to his stomach, where his t-shirt had ridden up to expose bare skin. He gasped when Mike reached for him, was already that fucked up, on edge, needy, and almost laughed at himself when all Mike did was take off his shoes for him, then his socks.

“I was right, you know,” Mike said when he reached up to grab the hem of Jay’s pants and boxers. He pulled them down in one violent jerk, dragging Jay’s aching ass across the bed in the process. “It should have been you,” he said when he met Jay’s eyes again, tossing his pants and underwear away. “In the movie.” He reached for Jay’s t-shirt and pulled it off roughly, catching the collar on Jay’s throat as he yanked it free, and shoved Jay flat onto the bed again when he was fully undressed. Jay was blushing all over and breathing hard. Mike was nodding to himself, pressing his lips together. “Yeah, we would have been famous, if I could just, like-- Capture this.” 

Mike held his hands up to frame the scene: Jay naked on the bed, undone and wet-eyed, his face on fire. It was like Mike had done it, no camera required. Jay felt captured.

“In some alternate universe we’re famous pornographers,” Mike said, and when he grinned at the mental image it was like things were suddenly normal between them again, just for a second. “Don’t you think?”

“What, like. Porn stars? Or, uh. Directors?”

“Which one of us would be which, Jay. I fucking wonder.” 

Jay snorted and smiled a little, resting his hands on his stomach again. He had moments of staggering confidence that cut through the rest of their bullshit, when he was sure he’d gotten under Mike’s skin in a way that would never let him rest, that it ate Mike up inside and kept him awake at night. Mike’s eyes got dark, like he’d noticed Jay feeling this way, and Jay gasped again when Mike grabbed his dick.

“You’re gonna come, already?” Mike shook his head and jerked Jay’s cock roughly, watching him fall apart and arch into it. “Jesus, you really are. Fucking-- Go ahead, let me see.”

Jay made a huffing noise of indignation and rubbed his hands over his chest, turned his cheek against the mattress and closed his eyes. Mike wasn’t wrong, he was close, and the possessive, impatient way Mike handled his cock was bringing him closer, too soon. It was fucking humiliating, getting that wound up before Mike had even taken his clothes off, spread out for him and on display. 

“Open your eyes,” Mike said. 

Jay did, and as soon as he shyly lifted his gaze to meet Mike’s he had to shut them again, because he was throwing his head back, biting his lip and coming hard in Mike’s pumping fist. 

“Oh fuck yeah,” Mike said, and his voice seemed to rumble through Jay’s bones, maybe because he still had his hand around Jay’s dick and was milking out every drop while Jay shuddered beneath him. “God, you-- Jay. You’re so good at doing what I tell you. I’ve thought-- Jesus, fuck, I’ve thought about it. All the nasty shit I could make you do.”

“Do it,” Jay said, his voice torn up, breath shallow. He cringed and pressed his thighs in around Mike’s wrist when Mike kept hold of his dick, his grip too tight and any touch too much after Jay had come. Jay didn’t tell him to stop, just whined softly and bucked in Mike’s grip until he let go.

“Really,” Mike said when Jay wrenched his eyes open again and looked up at him. “You really want that?”

“What the fuck do you think.”

Mike lifted his eyebrows. He looked either impressed, pleased, or like he felt sorry for Jay. Maybe it was all three.

“In that case,” Mike said, stepping back from the bed. His hands went to the front of his jeans, and only then did it occur to Jay to check and see if Mike was hard: of course he was, straining against the front of his pants. “Get on your knees,” Mike said, stepping back again as he pulled his zipper down. “And suck my cock, you smug little shit.”

Amateur, Jay thought, suppressing a smirk when he sat up on the bed. Lifting himself upright made him remember how wrung out and tired he’d felt before getting that text from Mike. Now he was wired, even after coming, and he felt like this energy was flowing directly from Mike, like they were plugged into each other. It was like Jay wasn’t going down onto his knees because he wanted to-- though he did, fuck, more than anything --but because Mike was pulling on the pulsing thing that connected them, making him do it.

“Oh jesus,” Mike said, soft and low enough that Jay felt proud of himself just for mouthing sloppily at Mike’s cockhead. Jay was trying to make himself savor this for ten seconds before he totally lost himself in it, because it was what he’d wanted for so long and now he had it, right up against his lips. Mike was bigger than he remembered. Mike was perfect, and Jay just wanted all of him in his mouth all the time.

Mike took a big handful of Jay’s hair and pulled, dragging him forward. Jay choked on a moan and opened for Mike’s cock, taking him into his mouth as deeply as he could, eyelids fluttering and blood thundering in his ears for how good this felt. He was already getting hard again, for the stretch at the corners of his mouth and the weight of Mike on his tongue, the too-salty taste of him. 

“Mhm, yeah,” Mike said when Jay bobbed his head smoothly, letting Mike see how good he was at this. He was developing a reputation at the gay bar closest to home, to the point that he went to a different one if he wasn’t sure that he wanted to be approached for a blow job within a few hours of being there. Sometimes this made him feel like a stupid chump, or somebody trying to live the youthfully reckless years of his life a decade too late. Other times, most of the time, it made him feel like he’d finally grown up and nobody was going to stop him from having what he wanted, because nobody had the power to make him feel bad about it anymore.

There was nothing he wanted even as close to as much as he wanted Mike’s huge dick in his mouth, Mike’s hand tugging at his hair and guiding his head, and those swallowed-up noises Mike was making while Jay alternated between deep-throating him and keeping him on the edge with teasing strokes of his tongue, worshipping him. Jay loved this so much he’d do it in front of a fucking audience, on camera, anywhere, and thinking about this made him moan and drool around Mike’s cock, content to be putting on a show just for him. 

“Goddamn,” Mike kept saying, softly. He’d stopped pulling on Jay’s hair and was stroking it softly, sliding his fingers through the disordered strands. The gentle touches felt filthy in a different way, as if Jay was some tender thing that Mike was defiling. Jay peered up at Mike with hazy eyes and his mouth stuffed with cock, blissed out and ready to do this for hours. 

He could feel by the shake in Mike’s thighs that they didn’t have hours, at least not for this first go-round. He told himself this wasn’t just some singular happenstance that they’d never talk about and wouldn’t repeat for three years. Jay would crawl to Mike on all fours and beg for this if he had to. He wouldn’t close himself up and spend years nursing wounded pride. He’d been with other guys now and knew what that was like. It was not like this. He felt like he’d been rolled across the floor like a carpet, laid out for Mike, and knew nobody else in the universe could ever make this feel like the best thing that had ever happened to him. 

“Okay, all right,” Mike said, clearing his throat when he eased Jay back off his dick. “Easy there, uh. Shit, you look-- Jay.”

Jay wiped at his mouth and stayed on his knees, breathless and peering up at Mike. He knew how he looked, approximately. Like some kind of sex zombie, hungry and empty-headed. 

“Wanna fuck you,” Mike said, rubbing his thumb over Jay’s used, puffy lips.

Jay nodded slowly. He would die if Mike didn’t fuck him right away, so that was a good plan.

“Does it hurt?” Mike asked when he helped Jay stand and sat him on the bed. 

“What?” 

“Your ass. Does it-- I hit you hard enough to bruise.”

“Yeah, I-- I don’t know. Yes, it hurts.”

“Good.” Mike was stepping out of his shoes, pushing his pants all the way down. “You know. I want to hurt you. Like, do you understand that?”

Jay nodded. He was fully hard again, sitting on the edge of the mattress and rolling his hips down to chase the bloom of pain on his ass cheeks, glad that Mike was thinking about it.

“No, you don’t,” Mike said. He looked a little forlorn, unbuttoning the short-sleeved shirt he’d worn to the party. He had an undershirt on beneath it, and he smelled so good when he slid the other shirt off and stepped closer to the bed, like sweat and summertime, smoke from the grill at that party. “You don’t know what I mean,” Mike said, taking hold of Jay’s chin when he was close enough to touch.

Jay put his hands on Mike’s thighs and stared up at him, resisting the impulse to rub his face against Mike’s cock like a lunatic. 

“I don’t care what you do to me,” Jay said. “Leave marks.” He was thinking about the next party they went to, how people would see them together and know: those are Mike’s teeth marks on Jay’s neck, Mike’s thumbprint-sized bruises on his wrist, oh god, they finally fucked and Jay barely survived.

“Hey, asshole,” Mike said, suddenly looking like he would cry. He leaned down onto Jay, pushing him back onto the bed and climbing on top of him, straddling him as he pressed his lips to Jay’s ear. “I don’t think you get it. Jay. I want to cut divots into your fucking soul, you pitiless demon.” 

Jay groaned and threw his head back. For a second thought he was going to come again just from hearing that. His skin seemed to tighten all over, and his cock dribbled pathetically onto Mike’s undershirt. He loved Mike’s voice, and how secretly fucked up Mike was, and how he thought no one knew. Jay always had. He could remember being eleven years old, seeing Mike smoking cigarettes with his friends behind the school, and wanting to be him so bad that it hurt. It was an intimate pain that now belonged to both of them and never went away.

Mike bit at Jay’s neck in a way that felt victorious, sinking his teeth in maybe deep enough to draw blood, maybe not. Jay couldn’t tell and couldn’t think, didn’t want to. He clung to Mike with his arms and his legs, everything he had wrapped around Mike and holding him in place.

“Yes,” Jay said, as if he even needed to at that point, as if Mike couldn’t feel it deep in his gut and everywhere, like Jay could. “Yes, yeah, please, that’s-- _Yes_.”

Jay had a flashing memory of the AV room, being together in the dark with the rest of the world far away. Someplace where they weren’t supposed to be, where nobody had given them permission and no one could see them. He smiled up at Mike like a dope when Mike pulled back to touch the tip of his nose to Jay’s. Jay couldn’t help the dorky smiling, though he didn’t want to ruin the mood. Everything would always be okay if they could just stay pressed together like this, he thought.

“Oh, don’t--” Jay said, turning away when Mike moved in to kiss him on the mouth. 

Before Jay could explain that he’d barfed after the party and that he’d rinsed his mouth out but still hadn’t properly brushed his teeth, that his breath was probably bad at best, Mike flipped him around and pulled him up onto all fours with a grunt. 

“Where’s your lube?” Mike asked, already tearing through the drawer on the table beside Jay’s bed. 

“Um, it’s-- Yeah.” Jay turned back to see Mike had found it. He debated explaining his current aversion to kissing on the mouth and the fact that he’d thrown up mostly because he’d made himself ill with wanting exactly what he was about to get, but the timing didn’t feel right. They’d talk after. He wanted Mike angry, wanted to be punished for what he’d done earlier and everything he’d ever done wrong. 

“Are you sure that guy fucked you?” Mike asked when he was feeling between Jay’s ass cheeks, rubbing slick fingers over his hole and pressing in a little. “Jesus, you-- Mmph. So tight.”

Jay just moaned into the sheets, glad he could hide his face. He’d never felt so surrendered, and there was nobody else in the world he wanted to give himself up to like this, only Mike.

“God, you look good like this,” Mike said, sounding kind of mad about it as he slid one fat finger into Jay, holding him steady by the hip with his other hand. “Here, too,” he said, and he released Jay’s hip so he could give his aching ass cheek a flick. “All red.” 

Jay made a soft, beseeching noise, hoping it would only piss Mike off and make him meaner. Tommy was always trying to get him to talk during sex, like they were still exchanging text messages: call me this, call yourself that, cheesy shit that didn’t work live and in person. Jay hoped Mike would let him stay like this, sub-verbal. He also hoped Mike wouldn’t stop talking.

“Do you need to come again?” Mike asked when he’d found Jay’s prostate and was giving it merciless attention, making him cry out and claw at the bedsheets. Mike spoke as if to an irritating child: again, really, already? 

“I don’t know,” Jay said, sobbing this out, his voice muffled against the sheets. What Mike was doing was too intense or maybe too soon after his last orgasm, but he did feel like it was going to make him come, that if he touched his cock he’d shoot painfully hard. “Mike, just--”

“Shh, shut up. I know what you need, what you really need.”

Jay groaned with relief and drooled against the sheets when Mike slid his finger out. He let himself imagine the bottomless shame he would have felt if he’d let Mike do this to him in high school, and how good and terrifying it would have been to let himself sink into it, how he wouldn’t have been able to recover from the highs when the lows hit him. He wasn’t sure why he was thinking about this while he listened to Mike slick his cock up and breathe heavily behind him, except that he felt small in the way he had back then, and in awe of Mike’s ability to construct a scene without hesitating, as if he had never not been in control of everything. 

“You better have been using something with him,” Mike said, dragging his cock over Jay’s hole. He was holding Jay’s ass cheeks apart with both hands, squeezing, making him grimace against the mattress and push back for more. 

“Suh, something-- Yes, yeah.” Jay knew he meant condoms. “No one’s ever-- Without one. Except you.”

Jay went tense when Mike’s hands slid to his hips. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to mention that they’d fucked before. Half of him wasn’t even sure anymore if he’d just imagined it. He couldn’t think about it without feeling like he was losing his mind, because he’d thought about it too much. It had become absurd that this thing he obsessed over had ever been something he’d actually had, right up against his body, inside him, as close and deep as anyone could have anything. 

“That’s good,” Mike said, stroking Jay’s back with a tenderness that made him shiver. “Good, Jay. See? You’ve always known, too.” 

Mike pushed inside him after saying so, like he was sealing a pact. Jay screamed silently into the sheets, eyes pinched shut. He’d thought Mike was about the same size as Tommy but had underestimated his thickness. The aching stretch of it was so perfect that as soon as Mike’s cockhead slid over his prostate Jay started to come with a pained little cry, emptying weakly onto the bed while Mike kept sliding in, deeper. 

“Oh, fuck,” Mike said, going still when he realized what was happening, that Jay’s all-over trembling was another orgasm. “Jesus, Jay.” He pet Jay’s shoulders with one hand and squeezed the back of his neck with the other. “That’s. You’re. Fucking hell.”

Jay just sobbed softly against the sheets. It wasn’t like real crying; his eyes were dry. He felt so good, melted and mindless, stuffed full and caught. He whimpered when Mike leaned down over his back, coming to a full seat inside him in the process. Mike licked at the marks he’d left on Jay’s neck, sighed against them with a hot, heavy breath, then sank his teeth in again.

Jay wanted to be fucked hard and was beginning to understand that Mike was going to take his time getting there. Mike was sober and Jay was all fucked up, and Mike was going to enjoy the power imbalance, was enjoying it. Jay could feel it in the way Mike held him tight while leaning over him and grinding into him just a little, like a tease. Jay was doubly sensitive after coming twice, hissing for even the lightest brush of Mike’s fingers over his nipples, then keening helplessly when Mike pinched and pulled at them. He didn’t care that Mike would probably torture him for hours. He felt so full and warm all over, so good. He never wanted this to end.

“Did you do all this for me?” Mike asked, running his hand over Jay’s abs and pecs, his flat stomach. 

“No,” Jay said, and his broken, tiny voice made this sound so much like _yes_ that Mike laughed.

“Mhmm,” Mike said, starting to fuck him in shallow little shunts of his hips, like he couldn’t help it. He pushed his face in against Jay’s throat and nipped him there lightly. “You’re in so much trouble, showing your hand like this. You feel so _fucking_ good. Gonna do whatever I want to you from now on.”

“Oh god,” Jay said, squeezing up around him. It was almost impossible; Mike filled him that completely. “Yes, yeah. Please.”

“Yeah, we’ll see. You might not like it as much as you think.”

Jay shifted underneath him, trying to get him deeper. There was nothing Mike could want to do to him that he wouldn’t fall onto his knees for. If Mike didn’t know that yet, maybe it was for the best. Maybe he got off on thinking Jay was at his mercy and that he wasn’t happy about it. 

“Of course,” Mike said, his breath coming a little quicker as his thrusts got longer. “You’ve always had that death wish of yours.” 

“That’s you,” Jay said, unable to help himself.

“Ha, is it? You think I want you dead?”

“I meant--”

Jay’s voice was cut off by a brutal inward thrust that made his words devolve into a croaking groan. 

You don’t scare me, Jay thought, and he stuffed his fist into his mouth to keep from saying it when Mike started fucking him hard. Mike might take it like a dare, and Jay wasn’t sure he was ready for whatever Mike would do in response.

Once he was really fucking into Jay, Mike wasn’t content to let him stay pressed against the bed with his ass lifted, face hidden. He lifted Jay up so that he was still hugged against Mike’s chest and on his knees, held over the bed at a forty-five degree angle and flopped bonelessly in Mike’s grip while Mike did all the work, both of them getting very sweaty. 

“You’re hard _again_?” Mike said, laughing against Jay’s ear when he reached down to feel this. 

Jay just whined in answer, knowing it would hurt if he came a third time. He was only half hard, anyway. He spread his legs a little and let Mike jerk his dick like it was his plaything, a toy. 

“Tell me why,” Mike said, licking at Jay’s ear, maybe remembering how much he liked that.

“Wha, what--”

“Why are you so hard for getting your ass fucked, Jay? And sucking dick? Jesus, _mph_. Explain it to me, go.”

Mike was starting to sound pretty unhinged himself, probably close to coming. Jay had two options: say nothing and let Mike bite him or spank him or whatever in response, or just throw the rest of his heart onto this bonfire, because why not.

“‘Cause it’s you,” Jay said, lifting his hands to put them over Mike’s. 

Mike made a pinched-off noise near Jay’s ear, went still behind him, and came with a long exhale that shook through both of them, his grip on Jay’s chest so tight that it hurt. Of all the pain Jay had sunk into gladly since this started, that was his favorite: the moment when Mike held onto him so hard that he couldn’t breathe, and it was like Mike breathed for him. 

Jay couldn’t remember if Mike had seemed to unload inside him for an eternity last time, too, just that it had felt like Mike’s come would never stop leaking out of him afterward. He assumed that would again be the case and laughed tiredly as Mike lowered him onto the bed, slipping out of Jay as he did. Mike was sitting up on his knees when Jay rolled onto his side and peeked up at him with one eye, panting and shaky beneath him. 

If Mike really wanted to claw out chunks of Jay’s soul, he was right there in position to do it. He could stagger out of the bed, dress without saying anything, and leave.

“I’m serious,” Mike said, still fighting for his breath. He reached down to touch Jay’s come soaked, fucked-open hole, rubbing his fingers around it until Jay cried out and closed his eyes, turning onto his stomach to give Mike better access. “This is mine,” Mike said, sinking one finger halfway in. “Don’t let anyone touch you without asking me first.” 

“Okay,” Jay said, hiding his face again, arching his back. “Yeah. Okay, yes.”

“Same goes for this,” Mike said, and he brought the fingers on his other hand to Jay’s mouth, pushed two inside. 

Jay just moaned around them and nodded, his tongue moving lazily against the intrusion.

“Good,” Mike said. He pulled his finger out of Jay’s ass and spanked him in one quick little slap. It was enough to make Jay whimper around the fingers still in his mouth, mostly for the memory of how hard Mike had done it before.

Jay gave Mike’s fingertips a soft bite as he extracted them from his mouth. Mike sniffed and leaned down to kiss his ear. 

“You look so messed up,” Mike said, running his hand from Jay’s shoulder down to his hip. “Fucking pretty. Somebody should paint you like this.” 

“Fuck off,” Jay muttered, eyes closed. He expected Mike to leave. His systems were coming back online, bracing for the icy drop. 

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Mike said. He kissed Jay’s neck, licked his throat. “God, you don’t know how long I’ve wanted just-- This. To fuck you till you’re sick.” 

“I’m not-- What?” Jay turned his cheek and blinked up at Mike, glaring at him. “I’m fine.” 

“Bullshit. Bet you couldn’t even tell me what day of the week it is right now.”

Jay had to think about it. His mind was spinning.

“Sunday,” he said, still frowning at Mike. 

Mike laughed and left the bed. He went into the bathroom, ran the sink for a while, and came back with a towel. Jay hadn’t moved. He hadn’t even changed the petulant expression on his face. It was his only armor against whatever else Mike was about to do to him. 

“Here,” Mike said, rolling Jay onto his back. The towel was damp at one corner, and Mike used to wipe at Jay’s sweaty face, then his chest. Mike smirked at the noise Jay made when Mike cleaned his dick for him. Jay felt stupid but also-- Something else. Something good. His nipples were stiff, sore, and he had goosebumps. 

When Jay was marginally less sticky and come-soaked, Mike threw the towel on the floor. He stretched out on the bed facing Jay, his head propped in his hand, elbow digging into the mattress. Jay just stared at him, resenting how mesmerized he was by Mike’s every move. 

“Do you always come that much?” Mike asked. He touched Jay’s ear, stroking him there with gentle fingertips. It felt a little bit like an apology, for that question or something else. 

“I don’t always do anything,” Jay said, closing his eyes and thinking of how happy Mike would be to hear that he barely came at all for Tommy. Jay wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of knowing. He sighed and scooted a little closer when Mike kept touching his ear, rubbing his thumb down over the rim and then back up again. 

Jay didn’t intend to fall asleep. He’d never been more exhausted and it took him off guard, how fast he went under once his eyes were closed and he’d accepted that Mike wasn’t leaving, at least not right away. He drifted in and out for a while, waking a little to the feeling of Mike stroking his back, kissing his cheek. Then he was out cold, far away from everything.

**


	5. Chapter 5

It was dark in the apartment when he woke up, and he’d slept so deeply that it took him a minute to remember what had happened before he passed out. The light was on in the bathroom and the shower was running, which meant Mike was still there. He’d draped the comforter over Jay before leaving him in bed, though it was a hot summer night. Jay was sweaty beneath it, also starving. He wrenched himself from the bed, which reeked of sex in a way he wasn’t sure he liked, and got dressed in the dark. 

Mike found him in the kitchen, ravenously eating a bowl of cereal by the light of the moon. 

“It’s the only thing I have,” Jay said with a mouthful, though this wasn’t true. He also had vegetables, some chicken, rice, other things he didn’t feel like preparing in the state he was in, which did feel like recovering from some illness. “If you let me brush my teeth, I could kiss you goodbye,” he added, not sure what Mike was plotting. He was just standing there, damp haired and dressed to leave. He’d even put his shoes on. 

“Brush your teeth?” Mike said. He looked as lost for what to do next as Jay felt.

“Yeah, ‘cause. I barfed, after the party. I told Tommy to get lost and I came up here and I puked. That’s why, uh. Before, when you tried-- Anyway. I feel better now. Thanks.”

“Thanks?” Mike grinned and walked a little closer. “Jesus fuck, look at you. Sitting there eating cereal for dinner like a kid and thanking me for fucking you in the ass. Amazing.”

“Fuck you!” 

Jay’s face got hot. He hoped Mike wouldn’t see it, that the room was dark enough. 

“I helped myself to your grooming products,” Mike said. He ran a hand through his hair as if to demonstrate. “Very nice.” 

Jay just shoveled cereal in his mouth and glowered at him. He wasn’t even sure how to feel. Mike had stayed there watching over him while he slept for hours, probably. Either that or he’d been in the shower for that long. 

“Wouldn’t want to interrupt your meal there,” Mike said, edging toward the door. “I’ll let you kiss me next time. Maybe.”

“Next time?” Jay snorted and stirred his cereal as if he wasn’t immensely relieved.

“Yep. Next time you’re about to get reamed or get on your knees for someone else, text me and tell me all about it, like I said. Then, if you’re lucky, I’ll tell you no, you can’t do that, and to come get what you really need from me instead.”

“Okay Rumpelfuckskin. Whatever you say.”

Mike guffawed and then laughed hard. Jay shoved more cereal into his mouth to hide how much this pleased him. 

“That was clever,” Mike said.

“So glad you think so.”

Mike hurried over to Jay in a way that made him tense up, not sure what to expect. He still hardly knew what was happening when Mike took a handful of his hair, pulled his head back and leaned down to kiss him on the mouth so urgently that it felt a little bit like a slap. Jay grabbed Mike by the ears and held him there, opening wide for his tongue without reservation. His heart was slamming when Mike pulled back to exhale. 

“You don’t taste like puke,” Mike said.

“What a relief.”

“I mean, you’ve tasted better.” 

Jay boggled at this admittance that they’d kissed before. Mike winked and leaned down to give him another peck on the lips before releasing his hair. 

“I mean it about other guys,” he said, backing away. “Ask me first.” 

“This is not romantic,” Jay said, just in case Mike thought so.

“Oh my god,” Mike said. “No shit. I pity the fool who tries to seduce you with romance, Jay.”

This made Jay grin, and Mike smiled back at him in a way that made it seem like he’d hurry back over for more kissing. Instead, Mike stood there looking triumphant and defeated at the same time, which was such an authentically Mike thing to do that Jay almost leapt out of his chair and ran to him. Mike turned and left before he could. 

As soon as he was gone Jay felt giddy in a way that embarrassed him. He wanted to get up and run laps around the apartment, jump on the bed, do backflips, something. He finished his cereal and made himself calm down, already scanning over the events of the afternoon and knowing they were going to replay endlessly in his head, even if he and Mike really started doing this on a regular basis. This was still the seminal moment, the invitation he’d gotten to be treated like an adult instead of a sheltered thing too sacred to get cracked open like that.

He took a shower and took stock of what Mike must have used in there: hydrating shampoo, his special soap for sensitive skin, maybe even the conditioner that cost a lot but reliably made his hair shiny. The scent of this stuff would linger on Mike all night long, and hopefully it would drive him nuts. Jay missed him. He wanted to text him like an idiot, like a desperate teenager with a first crush, like he hadn’t gotten used to this all the time stabbing pining feeling around fifteen years ago. He wasn’t even sure what he’d say, if he were stupid enough to send something. What are you doing? What are you thinking about? Are you thinking about me? Can we do it again yet?

He slept surprisingly well that night, despite the long nap, the sex smell in his bedroom having diminished just enough to be pleasant rather than overpowering. In the morning he took his time waking up, rolling over in bed and savoring the feeling that he had no idea what was going to happen next. His ass cheeks were sore and he felt wrung out all over in a satiated way that he’d never been able to enjoy before, not like this. When he finally dragged himself out of bed he checked his neck for marks and rubbed his fingers over the lurid red-purple bruise left by Mike’s teeth. He didn’t even care what people would think or who might ask. Mike had bitten him on the right side of his neck, where he’d be able to see it from his chair at the shop. 

Jay wasn’t nervous or insecure on the way to the shop, none of the old shit getting in the way of how good he felt. It was like he’d slain some dragon, or Mike had. Maybe they’d done it together, like in Jay’s dreams about the two of them fighting their way out of the Snake Princess movie’s universe. 

Mike was late as usual. Jay made himself coffee and took his seat behind the counter, buttoned the Lightning Fast shirt over his t-shirt and made sure the collar wasn’t high enough to entirely hide his bruise. He started to feel a little antsy after half a cup of coffee, wondering if he hadn’t worried enough about how this might still go wrong. But how could it go wrong? It wasn’t right in the first place. It was a fucked up, twisted, non-thing, which was why he loved it, and Mike, for figuring out how to unearth the corpse of what they’d brought to life and killed years ago, reviving it so that it could walk the earth as a monster. 

Mike looked a little queasy when he finally showed up. He was feeling guilty, probably. Jay didn’t mind this, maybe even liked it. He knew he looked good that morning and could see Mike noticing. Jay wasn’t sure what the right word for it was, but he’d undergone something like a full body and soul exfoliation, dead things scrubbed away and everything that remained shining brighter without them. 

“I got stuck behind that wreck on Brady,” Mike said, as an excuse for being extra late. He had his Lightning Fast shirt on already, always took his home with him and wore it out to the bars half the time. 

Jay shrugged. “Then I guess I won’t dock your pay,” he said. 

“Ha. Yeah.” Mike took his place behind the counter and gave Jay’s neck a nervous glance, reddened. “Hey, funny story. Sara called me last night.”

Jay felt the water level of his certainty dropping rapidly. So there was one way this could be wrecked. If Mike hadn’t even gone a whole night without fucking someone else, what would that mean? Something not good. Even undead monsters could be hacked back to the grave by angry villagers. 

“What’d she want?” Jay asked, muttering this into his coffee cup as he took another sip.

“She asked me if you were okay.” Mike smirked when Jay turned to look at him. “I was like, yeah. I took care of it.”

“Jesus.” Jay flushed and hid his grin by drinking more coffee.

“Well, I did. Lemme see that, c’mere.” 

Mike scooted his chair closer and reached over to pull Jay’s collar down. He winced at the bruise, then brushed his thumb over it. Jay just sat there and pretended his heart wasn’t pounding, also inflating with hope. Mike could probably feel it anyway. His fingers were right there over Jay’s pulse. 

“Can I tell you something awful?” Mike asked, still touching the bruise. 

“Okay,” Jay said. He was getting hard, just from this.

“In your shower, you have this soap that says it’s for sensitive skin.” 

“Um. Yeah?”

“Well. While you were sleeping, I beat off in there just ‘cause of seeing that, just-- Thinking about your sensitive skin. You know. It got me going again.”

“Wow.” Jay couldn’t look at him. He was smiling, trying to downplay it before he started outright beaming. He kept his eyes locked on the front door of the shop. “That is awful.” 

“Remember when you cut your thumb on that cracked VCR last year, while we were working on it here, and you made this hurt little noise and then sucked the blood off your thumb? And I was like, I gotta go home early--”

“Oh my god.” Jay winced to keep his grin under control, pinching his eyes shut.

“I’m not gonna sit here and tell you about _every_ time I had to emergency jerk it because of you,” Mike said, poking his shoulder. “Because you’d like it too much. So, those were just two times. I thought I should mention them. It’s illustrative.”

Mike was grinning and looking pleased with himself when Jay finally glanced over at him, snickering. Jay shook his head and drank more coffee. He had once jerked off just because of the way Mike sat with his legs spread apart in the passenger seat of Jay’s car. He wasn’t going to say so, though. At least not yet.

The rest of their work day was normal. They talked about the new _Mad Max_ movie that Jay was still obsessed with, and his sister’s upcoming wedding and how tired he was of hearing about it. For their lunch break Mike ate half a sub sandwich that he’d left in the fridge on Friday afternoon, and Jay had to go across the street to the deli for takeout soup. He’d been so overcome that morning that he’d forgotten to pack his healthy lunch as usual.

“Only you would eat soup when it’s ninety degrees out,” Mike said. 

“It’s not that hot today,” Jay said, though this did seem like a bad choice once he was in their stuffy back room, attempting to eat while Mike stared at him. After a while Mike sighed and got up to throw his sandwich garbage away, passing behind Jay and brushing his fingertips around the back of his neck as he did, stroking them over the bruise. Jay got a half chub under the table and just kept eating, not sure what else to do. They couldn’t spend every minute of their shifts fucking from then on, and he didn’t want to seem too obviously available for whatever Mike wanted at the snap of his fingers, though of course he was, and of course Mike knew it. Something about being at work seemed to demand they pretend otherwise, temporarily. 

He did sort of expect Mike to follow him home and fuck him again that night, and was itching for it by the end of their shift. Mike headed for the bar instead, and Jay felt like he should probably follow if he wanted to get laid. He resisted the impulse, annoyed that Mike could potentially pull him back into that orbit so easily. Mike would just love it if he got fat again, would probably count it as some sort of personal victory, but Jay wouldn’t be able to stand it. He was too proud of how far he’d come from somebody no one ever looked twice at. 

He decided he needed to work out, that he felt weak and weird after all and needed the confidence boast. Mike groaned at the mention of the gym, as usual, and told Jay fine, that he’d see him tomorrow. 

Jay kept pausing during his usual workout routine, startled by bouts of feeling like there was something he’d forgotten to do. He had never known how to navigate even normal relationships, and had thought some kind of alternative nightmare of one would be ideal, but already his stomach was knotting up with uncertainty. When Tommy texted him, Jay said he was too tired to hang out. He went back to his apartment alone and sat there on the couch, trying to pay attention to a movie on Netflix and compulsively touching the bruise on his neck, glancing at his phone too often. 

The rest of the work week was normal, which was increasingly agonizing for Jay. He started to hate Mike for pretending that everything was as it was before, except for at random moments when he’d stare lewdly at the bruise on Jay’s neck or reach over to touch it. Jay didn’t smack Mike’s hand away when he did, hoping that every teasing touch would lead to sex, or even something tamely reassuring like making out in the back room during their shift. When it consistently didn’t he wondered if Mike was waiting for him to send some filthy text about being with another guy, asking permission. Were they actually going to do that? 

It seemed so, because they reached the weekend and Mike still hadn’t done anything beyond stroking the almost entirely faded bruise on Jay’s neck when Jay got a coffee refill or was bent over a VCR at the shop. By Saturday night Jay was pulsating nonstop with the need for something to fucking happen already, fed up with Mike’s bullshit. He got out his phone to text Tommy, and then thought, why involve a middleman at all? He could tell Mike anything he wanted to about other guys. It didn’t have to be true.

He paced around for a while, chewed his lip and reviewed some old sexting conversations he’d had with Tommy before composing and sending a message to Mike. 

_So I’m here at my place with Tommy for the evening. We’re on the couch and he’s touching my leg. Moving his hand pretty high now, up inside my thigh, squeezing. It’s making me hard, so. Just thought you should know._

Jay’s heart was in his throat after he sent this nonsense. He felt suddenly sure that this game wasn’t real, that Mike would sputter with laughter and read this out loud to whatever woman he was currently in bed with. Then a response came, less than a minute later.

_I guess that leaves me with one question jay_  
_do you want him to fuck you_

Jay somehow wasn’t prepared for this. His bottom lip was getting raw from all his nervous biting, and sweat was gathering across the back of his neck. 

_Yes_, he sent, because he fucking hated Mike for doing this to him, and for how hard it was making him. 

_so go ahead and ask permission like I told you to_

Jay snarled at the phone. Fucking Mike. Was it even worth it? He thought about how good it would be if Mike stormed into his place again and angrily pounded him into the mattress, and composed his reply.

_Can I please get fucked tonight Mike_

Texting with Tommy about what they wanted to do to each other was hot, but this was almost unbearable. Jay was hard, shaky, pissed off, desperate. He was starting to understand what Mike meant about having wanted to protect him from this until now.

_nope_, Mike sent. _but if you want him to jerk you off, be my guest._

“Are you fucking serious?” Jay said, shouting this down at his phone as if it was Mike’s smug face. 

Mike was calling his bluff. He knew Tommy wasn’t there. Jay wanted to throw the phone across the room, then retrieve it so he could call up Tommy and tell him to have at it, to fuck him all night long. He’d take fucking pictures, send them to Mike, set Mike’s car on fire--

Jay made himself take a deep breath and think. He reminded himself who was really in control here, in all areas outside of fucked up sex games. Jay was the one who had turned his life around and who could walk into Dix and take his pick of anybody in there, presuming they liked topping. He was the one who hadn’t put his heart into _Snake Princess_ like a goddamn fool and been left in whatever state Mike was currently in, which was something like irreversible decline, and of course Mike wanted to hurt him, because he thought Jay was too good for him and that he might figure it out someday.

_Thanks_, Jay sent, when he could get his shaky fingers working again. _That felt really good. Really needed to come. He used his mouth on me, too, hope that’s ok_

_my pleasure_, Mike sent back, after some time had passed.

“I’ll fucking bet,” Jay muttered, and he stalked into his bedroom to beat off. 

He could call up Tommy and arrange for all of that to actually happen, but then it would be like Mike had made the decision to do it more than he had, and also Jay didn’t love having Tommy’s mouth between his legs the way he’d hoped to. It felt so awkward. Nothing except Mike or some guy fucking his mouth while he thought about Mike had ever felt right.

He came thinking about Mike watching him service other guys, barely had to pump himself to finish after that texting foreplay. He wondered if Mike was alone in his apartment, also post-orgasm, or if he was awkwardly shuffling around some bar with a semi-hardon. He didn’t expect to hear from Mike again that night and didn’t like how his heart seemed to physically lift in his chest when he got a new message from him an hour later.

_is tommy still there_

Jay pondered how to reply and then just felt tired.

_No_, he sent. _Why_

_just making sure you didn’t get him off without permission_  
_seems unlikely that he wouldn’t want the favor returned_

Jay supposed Mike was probably drunk now, which meant he was less good at this. Sensing opportunity, he reached under his sheets to stroke the inside of his thigh, slowly typing a reply with his thumb while he held his phone in his other hand.

_I didn’t make him come Mike_, he sent. _I was good_

_you were good for me huh_

Jay moaned under his breath and shifted his hand to his stiffening cock, giving himself just light touches. He’d come pretty hard after their previous exchanges, with a kind of urgent rage, but this felt good, too, like: leisurely. Companionable. 

_what’d you tell him_, Mike sent. _about why you couldn’t get him off_

Jay started typing a response, but apparently his one-handed method was taking too long, because his phone rang before he could finish. Mike was calling. 

“Hey,” Jay said when he answered, fake-casual. His dick was hard but his breathing was still normal, not agitated yet. 

“I want to hear this out loud,” Mike said. He sounded a little agitated himself, either angry or jerking his dick while he spoke. “Because if you’re feeding me bullshit I’ll be able to hear it. What did you tell that shithead about why he can’t have you.” 

“Oh, nothing,” Jay said. “I didn’t have to say anything. He was reading my texts. I explained our arrangement.” 

“Yeah, right,” Mike said, breathing harder. 

“It’s true. I made up a story about why, so he’d understand. You know, he’s kind of emotionally vacant. So I told him, Mike is blackmailing me. Mike took video of me, years ago. He has this footage of me jerking off and fingering myself on camera, saying I need him, I want him, begging him to fuck me. And he’s always lorded it over me. Why do you think I do everything he says? Mike is a maniac. He’s tormented me my whole life.”

“And did he say he would save you from me?” Mike asked, barely grinding this out. His breathing had grown choppy, and Jay couldn’t hear him jerking his dick but he was sure it was happening. 

Jay gave his cock a squeeze, thinking about Mike’s hand on him. He closed his eyes and suppressed a moan, licked his lips.

“No,” Jay said, moving his hand on his dick while Mike panted in his ear. “He said in that case I was a little slut who deserved it.” 

Mike groaned. Jay bit his lip hard, until it hurt, and came maybe at the same time Mike did, letting the sick heat of it roll through him like a convulsion from demonic possession. He could hear Mike’s ragged breath when he came to, and was so out of it for a moment that he was startled to look over and remember Mike wasn’t actually there.

“Jesus christ,” Mike said. He sounded like he would cry, but Jay assumed that was just post-orgasmic overwhelmedness. “Jay.”

“Yeah?” Jay said, still catching his breath. 

“Did you come, just now?”

“Mhm. Yeah.”

“I can’t-- Can’t decide if I want you to lick it off your fingers for me or like. If I should bring you ice cream.”

Jay burst out laughing and then couldn’t stop. 

“Ice cream?” he said, still cracking up. “What the fuck?”

“Because-- Jesus! I know you were just trying to get me off but that was kinda disturbing. I feel guilty by association with your dark fantasies about me.” 

“Good, I don’t give a shit. You still got off to ‘em.”

“Yeah, well! Okay, I’m gonna come over. I don’t know, I think I’m bad at this.”

“At what, Mike.”

“Never mind. I’ll bring beer, too. Will you drink beer with me? One night a fucking week? You’re too skinny anyway.” 

Jay answered by hanging up on him. Twenty minutes later, Mike was knocking on his door, carrying a six pack and a grocery bag full of junk food, ice cream included. 

“I don’t have a lot of willpower,” Mike said, standing there in Jay’s doorway. “I think-- You know. You’d probably like someone who’s more like you, who’d be stone cold and disciplined.” 

“I’ll take what you are over that,” Jay said, pulling him inside. 

“Which is what?”

“Profoundly disturbed and obsessed with me.”

Mike tried not to laugh, and Jay felt pretty great about himself when he failed to hold it in. Jay shuffled into Mike’s space and tilted his head back, too sleepy and content after coming twice and having Mike show up like this to pretend he wasn’t happy and that he didn’t want to be kissed.

“I know you like it when I’m weird,” Mike said, bringing his face down toward Jay’s until they were just short of kissing. “But you’re skittish. Like a creature. That girl was right.”

“You remember the weirdest stuff.”

Mike hummed under his breath at the mention of what he did and didn’t remember. Jay was sure by then that Mike remembered every moment of that other time they fucked, just like Jay did, including the awful aftermath when they both did everything so wrong that it seemed easiest to pretend none of it had ever happened. Jay was pretty sure he’d somehow hurt Mike’s feelings that night, which was hilarious, because Jay was the one who lost his virginity and didn’t even get a goodnight kiss afterward.

“Sara said that Tommy told her you instructed him not to kiss you,” Mike said, still just brushing his lips over Jay’s. 

“The fuck are those losers talking about me like that for?”

“Oh god, everyone talks about you. They all want to fuck you now. Even the straight guys. The way they look at you, jesus. It’s obscene.” 

“You’re projecting, Mike.” 

“Am I, Jay? So it’s not true that Tommy is going around crying to people that you won’t kiss him?”

“He’s hardly-- Jesus.” Jay stepped back a little, not willing to talk about this while he stood there waiting for Mike to kiss him like an idiot. “Obviously he doesn’t give a shit about me if he’s gossiping about me with her. She’ll tell everyone. Fuck! I’m so sick of everybody.” 

“Me too. Let’s go watch movies and get drunk.” 

Jay felt buzzy after one sip of beer, settled on the couch with Mike’s shoulder pressed to his and staring uncomprehendingly at the movie Mike had put on. Jay couldn’t focus on it, couldn’t stop thinking about Mike saying everybody wanted him. He knew it wasn’t true, but maybe more people than he’d realized cared about who he was sleeping with, which was just as grossly thrilling, considering he didn’t need anybody except Mike to actually want him. He still wanted to be kissed but wasn’t going to beg for it, even if he ended up begging for other things before Mike left. Halfway through the movie, Mike reached over without taking his eyes off the TV screen and settled his huge hand high on the inside of Jay’s left thigh. Jay pressed his lips together to keep from grinning. He flexed up into Mike’s touch and almost moaned when he squeezed. 

“So, listen,” Mike said, still staring at the TV. “I want to leave bruises all over you.” 

“I know,” Jay said. He didn’t move, but started breathing a little harder. His cock was filling just from the way Mike was holding onto his thigh: tight, greedy, possessive, all the shit Jay would only love when it came from him.

“Don’t let me do it,” Mike said, rubbing his thumb up toward the crease of Jay’s groin and pulling his legs open a little wider in the process. “Jay. You should be with someone more careful. I can be careful with girls, you know, I always am. But with you, I don’t think I can.”

“Mhm.” Jay shifted against Mike and put his head on Mike’s shoulder, sighing for how good it felt to just collapse onto him. Mike’s attentions to his thigh felt good, too, like a threat. 

“I mean, look,” Mike said. “I’m already acting like a sex maniac. I jerked off twice before coming over here. Twice!”

“Me too. I mean, before-- Before you got here-- Mike--”

Jay exhaled and turned to bury his face against Mike’s shoulder. It was something he’d wanted to do since he was about fifteen, or maybe longer than that, without realizing it-- Had he done it before? Maybe that first time they fucked, when he was bouncing in Mike’s lap. This was better, coming at him from the side rather than the front. He clung to Mike’s arm and rubbed his face against his shoulder, spreading his legs wider for Mike’s hand.

“I mean, I’m fucking serious, actually,” Mike said, leaning over to mutter this against the top of Jay’s head. Jay felt him take a deep breath there and grinned. “This-- All week-- It’s making me feel like, I don’t know. Like I don’t even know who the fuck I am. Except, no. It’s the opposite of that. You make me feel like I know exactly who I am. A scary piece of shit who wants to chain you up and make you live off his come.” 

“Ew,” Jay said, looking up at him. 

“Well! Apparently you don’t want to be kissed.”

“Not by him!”

Mike’s grin came slowly. Jay was blushing, frowning, annoyed by how smugly yet accurately Mike had interrupted that remark. 

“Oh,” Mike said. “I see.”

Jay opened his mouth to call him an asshole. Mike kissed him before he could, pressing his tongue in past Jay’s parted lips.

It was better than their kiss in the kitchen, when Mike seemed to be trying to prove something, and better than their first drunken kisses, when Jay didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. Jay curled himself into Mike’s lap without even meaning to, and Mike wrapped his arms around him to pull him closer, still kissing him. Mike had his eyes closed every time Jay peeked at him. Having both come twice already that evening, they were in no hurry to get off and made out for a long time, pawing at each other until they were sweating under their clothes and biting at each other’s lips, pants open and limbs all tangled up. It was uncoordinated and lazy and Jay would have done it all night long, but he came when Mike pressed his teeth into the almost-healed spot on his throat where he’d marked him before. Mike’s hand was down the front of Jay’s pants, working him through his orgasm until he felt raw against Mike’s palm and had to push his wrist away. Jay moaned Mike’s name out like it was another word for _thank you_ and kissed him, then slid down onto the floor, onto his knees, and took him into his mouth. Mike didn’t last much longer after that. 

They fell asleep together on the couch, Mike stretched out on his back and Jay lying on top of him. Jay kept waking up to the feeling of Mike’s chest expanding and contracting beneath him, lifting him up and down, and the sound of Mike’s heart beating steady under his ear. It was hot in his apartment and they were both still fully dressed, sticky with sweat because of the unneeded body heat. It was uncomfortable, impractical, and also best sleep of Jay’s life, because every time he woke up he got to remember where he was, and where Mike was, and how they’d gotten there. The entire progress of his life felt like it meant something, finally.

Mike’s back was fucked up in the morning. Jay wasn’t sure why they hadn’t moved to the bed. Maybe they were afraid something as seemingly simple as relocating would screw everything up like it had on New Year’s Eve all those years ago. 

“I have an idea,” Mike said after they’d taken turns in Jay’s shower. Jay was making coffee and Mike was peering into his fridge, not looking pleased with what he found there.

“What,” Jay asked, wary. 

“You should write our next movie.” Mike closed the fridge and straightened, looking at Jay like this was a dare. “I’ll just direct it.” 

“Mike. We don’t have any money.”

“Let me worry about that. You write the script. The subject matter can be anything you want.”

Jay groaned. He felt like this was a bad omen but didn’t refuse the suggestion. He already missed making things, and _Snake Princess_ had been wrong from the start. He had some ideas about how it could have been better, or completely different. 

There was another get-together with their usual friend group that day, this time at an outdoor film festival. Jay had been planning to ditch it and go out on the boat with his family instead, because it was too hot to sit outside watching movies and film festivals always left him with the depressing feeling that he should be making things that were screened at them and that he never would. He decided to go anyway, because maybe it would inspire him to actually write a script, even if he never did anything with it or showed it to Mike. He felt suddenly like surrounding himself with weird films, and also with people who might notice the new marks on his neck. 

“Are you going to this movie thing today?” Jay asked Mike, while watching him eat the last of his cereal. 

“Are you?” Mike asked, not looking up.

“I guess. Come with me, okay?”

“Suuure. Will Tommy be there?”

“How the fuck should I know? He’s not my boyfriend.”

Jay said this too forcefully to conceal that he was fretting about it. He didn’t really care about Tommy, especially if Tommy had been talking shit about him to Sara, but he shouldn’t have said the word boyfriend at all in Mike’s presence. He was red-faced when Mike looked up at him, and Mike looked-- Something. Suspicious. 

“Okay,” Mike said. “Sounds like a shitshow. You know how much I like those.” 

Jay made sure they both looked good for what might as well have been their debut as a couple, or at least lifelong friends who’d had a depraved psychosexual experience together that went beyond just fucking. He felt like everyone must have somehow already found out about what happened between them last weekend, more or less, and was anxious to see if he was right. They went to Mike’s place so he could get changed, and Jay picked out his outfit for him: a black t-shirt and jeans that weren’t awful. Mike had the worst taste in shoes of anyone Jay had ever met, but there was nothing to be done about that. Possibly it just made him more butch and attractive. 

“I look fat in this,” Mike said, tugging on the shirt Jay had forced him into.

“No, you don’t. It just fits you.” 

Mike groaned. Jay could feel the mood of this whole thing dropping as they headed for his car. He told himself it was fine. 

It was a blazing hot, cloudless day. The festival venue was a park near Lake Michigan, but there was very little wind to cut the heat. Jay couldn’t fathom why this was happening outdoors or why his friends wanted to attend it, but there they were, a group of the usual suspects sitting on a picnic blanket under a massive white tent, facing a screen where the first movie was about to begin.

“Mike is here, too,” Jay said when he sat, glad to see that Tommy wasn’t. “He’s getting beers.”

“The beers are twelve dollars,” their friend Tim said, pulling a flask from his shirt pocket. “You can’t tell me Mike doesn’t have one of these.” 

Jay just shrugged. He could feel himself blushing already, and Sara staring at him. 

“Did you guys come together?” she asked. 

“Yep,” Jay said, not looking at her.

She reached between the arms of a few others to flick him. Jay glared at her.

“What’s your problem?” she asked. 

“I don’t have a problem. Actually, can I talk to you?”

He was angrier than he’d realized before he saw her. Nothing pissed him off more than confiding in people and getting betrayed. Maybe Tommy was the one who’d technically blabbed, but Sara had in turn told Mike about the details of Jay’s sex life, which was damn near unforgiveable. Jay had known her way longer than Tommy, and she knew how he fucking felt about Mike, if anyone did. 

They left the tent together, and Jay told himself to calm down. He didn’t want to get in a fight with his friend, but also didn’t want her to think he was too stupid to realize she’d been meddling in his affairs. 

“Whoa,” she said, noticing the bruise on Jay’s neck. She touched her own neck in the corresponding spot and made a bug-eyed face. “Which one of these vampires bit you?”

“Nobody. Mike told me you’re telling him shit Tommy said about me? What the fuck? That’s none of Mike’s fucking business, okay, and what’s it got to do with him, anyway? Like, how’d that even come up?”

He was talking fast and too loud and could feel how livid and unhinged he probably seemed, but it was too late. Sara didn’t seem upset, anyway. She was laughing and giving him a look of disbelief. 

“Like I’m the one who brought it up?” she said, eyebrows raised. “Um, honey? I didn’t want to tell you, because you already think you’re the hottest shit any of us has ever been in the same room with, but Mike _grills_ people about you and Tommy. There’s no fucking getting rid of him, he’s like a jealous ex-husband who needs a restraining order. Ever since that party. I guess that’s when he realized you and Tommy are together?”

“We’re not together-- What? I don’t think I’m-- Whatever, hang on. What was he asking about?” 

“Mike?”

“Yes-- Shh!” Jay checked over his shoulder, wishing he’d pulled her further from the crowd. At least three people on the blanket were watching them argue. Mike was still in line for beers, at least.

“What _wasn’t_ Mike asking about?” Sara said when Jay turned back to her. “He told me he’s morally responsible for you and that being around a philistine like Tommy was going to tarnish your artistic potential. What the fuck does that even mean? I can’t tell if he wants to fuck you or kill you and wear your skin, honestly.”

“I think both,” Jay muttered, accidentally out loud.

“He did that to your neck, didn’t he?” 

Sara smirked when Jay glared at her. He was deeply regretting his fantasy that showing off this mark was going to be exhilarating and hot, not embarrassing and incriminating. 

“Wow,” Sara said. She shrugged one shoulder. “Sorry if I’m being a bitch about this, but I had a crush on Mike for a long time. Then he got sort of weird. Didn’t he? Around the time you guys made that movie. Tommy really likes you, by the way. He tries to hide it, but he gets drunk and cries about you not letting him kiss you.” 

“Oh-- Bullshit! You’re messing with my head because you want to fuck Mike. And he’s always been weird. You don’t even know him, not really.” 

“Jay--”

“No, I’m serious. He puts on this drunken buffoon act for people, but you guys didn’t know him when he was younger, I’m the only friend he kept from back then--”

“Jay!”

Sara was gesturing as subtly as she could to something behind him. Jay turned. Mike was standing there, holding two twelve dollar beers.

“Got this for you,” Mike said, lifting one in Jay’s direction. Mike didn’t look angry, but he was avoiding Jay’s eyes, and Jay knew better than anyone that Mike would hide anything he felt for as long as he could, for years if necessary. “Oh, I didn’t mean you,” Mike said when Jay reached for the beer. “I was talking to her,” Mike said, smug and fake sweet. He pushed the beer in Sara’s direction, almost spilling it on Jay in the process. 

“Aww,” she said, taking it. “Thanks!”

Jay didn’t say anything. He glanced at Mike, who already turning back for the tent. 

“Did he hear me?” Jay asked Sara in a whisper when Mike had walked off. 

“I think so,” she said. “But it’s fine. We all talk shit about each other. You should hear what he says about you.”

“Um. What?”

“Oh, nothing worse than what you’ve said to me about him when you’re annoyed at him. My point is, you two are huge fucking drama queens, and look what happens when you pair up. _Snake Princess_ happens. Tommy is a good guy, Jay. You think it’s easy to find a man in Wisconsin who isn’t an unstable alcoholic? Don’t let Mike’s mental breakdown fuck up a good thing. Where was he when you were single? Right? He just wants to win.”

Sara sipped from the beer that was supposed to be Jay’s and walked off, flicking her hair back over her shoulder like she’d gotten the last word. Jay supposed she had. He couldn’t make himself speak, or move.

When he was finally able to get himself to head over to the blanket, the movie had started. Everyone was looking at Jay instead of the screen, except Mike, who had chosen a seat that left no space for Jay to sit beside him, unless he sat on the grass. Jay took a spot near Josh at the front.

“Everything okay, buddy?” Josh asked. 

“Uh-huh,” Jay said, staring straight ahead with grim resignation. Everything was fucked, actually. One wrong move was all it took, with Mike-- And that was really shitty, Jay thought. Maybe Sara had a point. 

“Tommy’s gonna be here a little later,” Josh said, whispering this since the movie had started. “He told me to tell you.” 

“Okay.”

Time seemed to distort, and the first movie they watched felt like it was seven hours long. Jay absorbed none of it and couldn’t really feel anything except Mike suffering in silence behind him. But why? Jay hadn’t said anything bad, had he? Maybe Mike had misheard. Maybe all he knew was that Jay had been talking about him with Sara, and he assumed it was gossipy or mean because Mike couldn’t conceive of people saying nice things about him.

Jay turned around when the movie was over. He was startled when he saw Mike was gone. 

“He went to get more beers,” Sara said. She sounded drunk, and Jay assumed Mike had gotten up for a refill before then, too, and had gotten another for her as well. Hell, maybe they’d both had five.

Jay got up, deciding he wasn’t going to be a victim of Mike’s pouting moodiness again. He was going to fix this now, rather than run away from it or assume it was his fault. Of course, Mike getting his feelings hurt wasn’t the only issue that was clouding him with dread. Had Tommy really cried about him? And Mike was calling up all their friends and badgering them for info about what Tommy and Jay had done together? He must have started doing so after that night when he fucked Jay. Or was he already at it immediately before, in the interval between Jay leaving the party and Mike texting him to tell him he would need Mike’s permission to fuck other men. Which was really kind of disturbing in a way that wasn’t funny, now that Jay thought about it?

He saw Mike in line for beers and met his eyes from across the festival grounds, which were bustling since it was an intermission between showings. Jay felt something open in his chest when this happened, the same overwhelming relief and terror he’d felt since high school. It didn’t happen every time their eyes met, but at certain moments, across some distance and when other people were blurred around them at the edges, it was like he was remembering that he and Mike were alive on the same planet at the same time and that everything would therefore be okay, whatever else happened.

Before Jay could reach the beer line, Tommy cut him off, appearing out of nowhere and giving him a hug like they were meeting at the airport after being apart for months. 

“You made it!” Tommy said, beaming at him and holding him by his arms. Jay was too stunned to have returned the hug, and couldn’t see Mike from over Tommy’s shoulders. Tommy was too tall, blocking his view. 

“Yeah, I-- Hang on, I’m gonna get a beer--”

“I’ll come with you. Hell yeah, twelve dollar festival beer. Is my brother here?”

“Um. Yeah--”

Jay was craning his neck, couldn’t find Mike. Had he left the beer line? No, he’d just moved up toward the counter.

“Oh, sweet, look who’s holding our place,” Tommy said. He had his hand on Jay’s shoulder and was sort of pushing him along, toward Mike. “What’s up, man?” he said, smacking Mike on the back to get his attention. 

Mike turned toward them in a way that made Jay afraid he would just haul back and punch Tommy in the face. He didn’t, of course, and Jay felt stupid for fearing this, like Sara had unhooked him too easily from his sense that he knew Mike better than her.

“Hey,” Mike said after a kind of awkward pause. “You’re here?”

“Looks like it,” Tommy said. He was grinning, seemingly oblivious, but something about his sudden enthusiasm for being at Jay’s side made Jay suspect he’d recently been clued in about Jay’s feelings on Mike and that now he wanted to win, too. Jay felt dizzy and overheated and wanted to leave. Mike still wouldn’t look at him. 

“Could you get me one?” Jay said, tugging on Mike’s arm as he went up to the counter. “Please?” he said, feeling like he might drop to his knees when Mike finally looked at him. Mike was stone-faced in a way that Jay knew was a bad sign, especially since he’d had at least two twelve dollar beers and was about to order another. “I could really use a drink,” Jay said, letting his hand slide pathetically from Mike’s arm when he said nothing. 

“I’ll get this round,” Tommy said, stepping forward to pay. “Three, please.”

“Four,” Mike said. “Sara wanted one, too.”

“Oh, fuck Sara!” Jay said, in a way that made both Tommy and Mike boggle at him and some stranger in line behind them laugh.

“What’d she do now?” Tommy asked. 

“Nothing,” Jay said, staring at Mike, who’d averted his eyes. “Forget it, just. Somebody hand me a fucking beer before I kill someone.” 

“Whoa,” Tommy said, and he squeezed Jay’s shoulder. “Is the heat getting to you? You look sunburned.” He didn’t wait for an answer, just turned back to the bartender and ordered four beers. His hand was still on Jay’s shoulder. Jay wanted to slap it off, but didn’t feel like he was allowed to. No response to anything that was happening seemed to be the right one.

The beers were fifty dollars after tip. Tommy paid in cash and didn’t complain. He was a bartender himself and made great tips, because he was handsome and tall and a flirt. He kept close to Jay on the way back to the tent while Mike walked ahead of them, carrying the beers for him and Sara. Jay would never talk to Mike again if he fucked Sara, he decided. He’d quit the repair shop and move away. He’d move to fucking L.A. and maybe he’d do great out there. Maybe Mike would cry about it every day for the rest of his life. 

This was the mood Jay was in when he sat between Josh and Tommy at the front of the blanket with his beer, knowing that Mike and Sara were both back there staring at him, probably whispering about him. He gulped the beer down, feeling dehydrated and knowing this afternoon was leading nowhere good. 

“Jay still won’t show me his movie,” Tommy said, elbowing him when the second film started up. 

“Shhh!” someone said from behind them. Jay was pretty sure it was Mike.

“It’s terrible,” Jay said, not whispering. “Stop asking.” 

“Aw, it’s not so bad,” Josh said. “It has its charms.” 

“Shhh! Jesus!”

That time it was definitely Mike.

Jay stared at the movie hatefully, ping-ponging between blaming himself for screwing this up again and resenting Mike for making everything so hard. He felt things too deeply and took everything too personally. And then turned around and told Jay he could fuck other guys if he asked first. What the fuck was that? It was true that Tommy wasn’t an unstable alcoholic and that most other people they knew were. Jay might count as one himself, from time to time. But Tommy was so boring and disappointing, and everybody always would be, compared to Mike. It was like a curse that had settled itself onto Jay back in Orfordville, something that Mike couldn’t have protected him from when walking him home at night. In fact, that was when the curse got him, probably, on those walks home past wind-rustled cornfields, when Jay would be babbling nervously and Mike wouldn’t seem to be listening until suddenly he cut in some perfectly astute comment that proved he always was. 

Jay was drunk off one and a half beers, having finished Tommy’s without asking. He hadn’t eaten anything all day, had just watched like a chump while Mike finished off the cereal. He turned to see what Mike was doing, half expecting him to be making out with Sara. She was definitely trying to make it happen, leaning onto him to whisper something into his ear. Mike looked grim and was staring at Jay. 

“Oh, shit,” Tommy said, close to Jay’s ear and startling him into turning back. “What happened?” he asked. He was pointing at Jay’s neck. Jay reared away when Tommy tried to touch him there. 

“Nothing,” Jay said. He got up. “I have to take a leak, be right back.”

He expected Mike to be the one waiting for him outside the disgusting park restrooms when he was finished, but it was Tommy. He didn’t look pissed off or hurt, though he’d surely at least worked out that the mark on Jay’s neck was put there by another guy. He looked like he was more interested in Jay than he’d ever been, worried about him and attentive. 

“Are you okay?” Tommy asked, touching Jay’s forehead. “You’re all hot. Want to get out of here?”

“I can’t,” Jay said, not sure how he would explain. 

“How come?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, I feel so shitty.” 

He leaned into it when Tommy hugged him, closed his eyes and rested his cheek against Tommy’s chest. Normally he’d never do this kind of thing in public, but he needed some kind of fucking comfort, and nobody else was offering it. 

“You probably haven’t eaten,” Tommy said, stroking his hair. “You’re so bad on the weekends. We can meet up with these guys later. Let’s go get you something to eat. This movie sucks, anyway.” 

Jay reasoned out how to explain this as they left together. Mike had been a bitch to him about the beer, giving the one he’d bought for Jay to Sara just because he’d half-heard Jay saying something about his psyche to her. He’d continued to be an asshole, and this behavior wasn’t new. Anyway, Jay wasn’t leaving to let Tommy fuck him. They were just going to get something to eat and get out of the sun. 

He texted Mike: _be right back, need to eat something._

_a cock?_ was Mike’s reply. Jay felt like he should have seen it coming.

_go fuck yourself_, Jay sent, hunched over his phone in the front seat of Tommy’s car. His stomach was starting to hurt pretty bad, twisting up. He knew he should stop there, that ‘go fuck yourself’ was a neutral enough message to bounce back from, but he sent more: 

_better yet, go fuck sara. You two deserve each other. And you can tell her I said that, but you probably already have, since I guess you love discussing me with her, but I’m not allowed to do the same without you throwing a fucking pity party for yourself._

_are you having some kind of breakdown_, Mike sent.

Jay didn’t respond. He was shaking, livid and also seasick with regret. Mike was so bad for him. This was proof. He was reduced to a queasy mess too easily by this shit.

Tommy took him to the Sail Loft. It was crowded but cool inside, and their table had a view of the water. Jay felt like he’d left an evil doppelganger behind at the festival and that it was murdering everyone while he sat looking at a laminated seafood menu and pretending things were fine. He was getting real tired of feeling like he was going to throw up all the time. He got a text from Mike and read it under the table while Tommy ordered appetizers.

_i’m serious are you ok??_

Jay was touched, then pissed off by Mike’s ability to flip his mood so easily. He imagined Sara reading this text off Mike’s phone, her chin on his shoulder, and wished he was with Libby instead of Tommy, that they could commiserate and complain about being in love with Mike for two hours over seafood. He’d heard that she had moved to New Mexico with a new boyfriend. Selfishly, because he didn’t want to be alone with the curse, he hoped she still held a candle for Mike.

“Everything okay?” Tommy asked when he saw Jay holding his phone under the table.

“Yeah.” He kept typing out responses to Mike and then deleting them. “Did you tell Sara I won’t let you kiss me?” he asked, dropping the phone on the bench seat without sending anything.

Tommy forced out a laugh and looked around the restaurant as if for help. 

“I told her I’m still trying to figure you out,” he said. “I know better men have tried and failed.” 

“Better men?” Jay scowled at him. “Huh? Who?”

“Jesus, I don’t know. That was what Sara told me, that you won’t let anyone near you except Mike, and that Mike-- Never mind.”

“No, tell me. I wish people would just say this shit to my face. I guess everyone thinks I’m a freak nutcase who’s some kind of game that everybody’s trying to win?”

“Jay.” Tommy’s face fell in a way that looked alarmingly sincere. He got up, shifted over to Jay’s side of the booth and put his hand on top of Jay’s, which was clenched tight around the front edge of the bench. “Sorry. I shouldn’t listen to her. She’s in love with Mike, and she thinks he’s, like. Repressed, about you.” 

“She needs to stay the fuck out of it!”

“Yeah, I agree.” Tommy checked to make sure no one was looking and then turned to kiss Jay’s forehead. “I just want to rescue you from that crowd, man. My brother is so over them, too, except for you. His girlfriend won’t do anything with them because they’re all so immature and mean.” 

Jay could appreciate being considered more mature than Mike and the others, also nicer. Of course he was, in plenty of ways. They were always careening around all over the place. Jay only ever did that when he was letting them do the driving. 

He felt better after eating greasy fried seafood and gulping down several glasses of water. Tommy remained seated beside him and let him steer the conversation away from their friends, Mike, and anything beyond the safe topics where Jay could reliably impress Tommy with his expertise. This was good, Jay told himself. This was what healthy people did. 

The rest of the group showed up to the Sail Loft for happy hour, as if following a homing beacon. Jay supposed they had just planned to go there after the festival and Tommy had brought him there because he knew the plan. Mike was with them, and he stayed quiet in a way that made Jay suspect he was trying not to seem as trashed as he actually was. He looked very tired and winced when he sat down in the booth across from Jay. Sara was suddenly keeping her distance from him, so he’d probably managed to piss her off. 

“What’s wrong?” Jay asked, wanting to bolt out the door with Mike as soon as their eyes met. “Your back?”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “I guess sitting on the ground for four hours wasn’t a great idea.” 

“Also last night,” Jay said, hoping everyone would hear. Tommy was sitting close to him but also talking to Josh about whether the calamari had been good.

“Mhmm.” Mike almost smiled. Jay pushed his shoe against Mike’s under the table. He had no idea what he was doing. 

“Did Libby move to New Mexico?” Jay asked, not sure where he was going with this. Mike hadn’t moved his foot away. 

“No,” Mike said, and he scoffed. “She works at Menards. Why?”

“I don’t know, I was just thinking about her.”

Mike rolled his eyes.

The rest of the evening was surprisingly calm. Everyone seemed to want to back away from how bad it all could have gone, and they had some laughs at the table about how bad the second movie at the festival had been. Mike seemed half asleep by the time they were splitting up the bill. Jay had left his car at the park and needed a ride back from Tommy. Mike and Josh rode with them, in the backseat. 

“So what next?” Tommy asked when they were nearly there. It sounded like a foreboding question, and Jay had to suppress a smile when Mike snorted like he thought so, too. 

“In what sense?” Jay asked.

“It’s only like eight o’clock, what should we do now?”

“Nothing, I gotta go to bed. Me and Mike have a shift in the morning.” 

“Bed?” Tommy scoffed. “Okay, old man, are you serious?”

“He is,” Mike said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t?” Tommy laughed and craned his neck to look at Mike in the rear view. “Yeah, you’re always early to bed, huh? I never see you closing down the Standard at three in the morning on a weeknight.” 

“I’m flattered that you’re apparently memorizing my social habits,” Mike said. “But I actually don’t do that anymore, so you can fuck off with that shit.” 

“Hey now,” Josh said. “He wasn’t--”

“Yeah, I guess that was just the olden days for you, Mike,” Tommy said. “Like, the yesteryear of two months ago.”

“Watch the road!” Jay said, punching Tommy’s leg. 

“Man, don’t even try it with me,” Mike said, with a derisive laugh that Jay was ashamed to find hot. “You’re way out of your depth, bro.” 

“In what way, exactly?” Tommy asked, again looking at Mike in the rearview instead of at the road. 

“I guess in the sense that those chew marks on your boyfriend’s neck are from my teeth,” Mike said.

“Fuck you!” Jay said, whirling on Mike as Tommy put the brakes on hard and Josh cursed in a panic, the car coming to a screaming halt on the road that ran alongside the park. “I’m not anybody’s boyfriend,” Jay said when Mike just smirked like he was hoping Jay would be the one who ended up punching him in the face. “And you don’t get to fucking say so for me!” 

“Oh my god,” Josh said, hands over his face. 

When the car was in park Tommy threw his seatbelt off and got out, moving around to the backseat like he was ready for a fist fight. Mike just sat there staring at Jay’s enraged expression. He didn’t resist when Tommy came to his door, opened it and yanked him out. 

“Get the fuck out of my car!” Tommy said, shoving Mike away while Jay climbed out to put a stop to this. 

“Seeing as we’ve reached our destination, no problem,” Mike said, skittering in his steps before he found his footing. “Jay,” he said, and when he met Jay’s eyes it was clear why he didn’t give a shit about fighting. He knew he’d already won. “Let’s go.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Tommy shouted when Jay walked over to him.

“Me?” Jay said, turning back. “Uh, my car’s over there? I’m going home?”

“With him?” Tommy said, pointing at Mike. “Is that really--” He gestured at Jay, then at his own neck. “That’s from him? Really?”

“Man, I told you I don’t want a fucking boyfriend,” Jay said, wishing Josh wasn’t bearing witness to this. He was the one friend in this group who belonged more to Jay than to Mike. “You don’t get to interrogate me.”

“You’re just like the rest of them,” Tommy said, shaking his head as he backed away. “A bunch of sociopath phonies.” 

“Okay, Holden Caulfield,” Mike said. “Jay, c’mon.” 

Jay gave Mike a murderous look but didn’t stop him from following him to the car. He heard Tommy peeling away and wondered if he should send an apologetic text to Josh tonight or wait until tomorrow. Behind the wheel of his car, he kept his eyes pointed straight ahead and made a solemn pact with himself to not respond to Mike’s bullshit, no matter how he tried to provoke him during the drive home.

Mike didn’t say anything. He turned on the radio and flipped around until he found a cheesy Billy Joel song. 

“I don’t belong to you,” Jay said when he couldn’t take it anymore, his jaw tight and both hands clawed around the steering wheel. 

“Don’t I know it,” Mike said.

“Is this what you were like with Libby? Is this why you were always breaking up, getting back together--”

“No, that would be because she knew I was in love with you,” Mike said, still without looking at him. “So. But you’re right, I’m sorry. This is what I tried to warn you about, and honestly, Jay? You’re not all that easy to fucking love. You can have me, like, buffet style. Take what you want, leave the rest. I don’t care anymore.” 

Neither of them spoke after that. Jay’s heart was beating hard, and it hurt because it felt like it was all pinched up on itself at the same time, squeezed. When he pulled up to Mike’s apartment building he knew he should say something like, well, I love you, too, but-- 

He couldn’t figure out what would come after the ‘but,’ so he said nothing and watched Mike go, the squeezing feeling in his chest getting so tight that he coughed. He drove home in a daze, and felt a text come in as he was pulling up to his place. He parked and turned off the car before reading the message, wanting it to be from Mike and not at all surprised that it was from Sara.

_omg WHAT HAPPENED, Josh is being vague?? Sorry I was a jerk today, I’m just jealous that all the men we know are fighting over you. Teach me your witchcraft, or at least call me tomorrow, hoe. luv ya!!_

Something about this made Jay feel better. He went up to his apartment, took a shower and decided he would call her tomorrow. Josh, too. He didn’t want to lose any friends over this. It felt impossible that he could ever lose Mike, except in the ways he’d never really had him to begin with, but he texted him before bed just in case.

_Sorry about your back. Next time you’d better come get in bed with me. OK?_

He figured this was close enough to saying: I love you, too. Please someday will you just hold me all night long?

Mike took a little while to respond. Jay didn’t grudge him the time it took to consider a response. It had been a fucked up day.

_ok jay_

Jay stared at those two words for a long time, not sure how to interpret them or if he should respond. He considered that he could easily spend the whole second half of his life still doing this dance with Mike, obsessing over tiny gestures and ducking big love declarations. He wasn’t sure whose fault it was anymore, just knew that when he got to the repair shop in the morning everything would be like it always had been, for as long as they could stand it.

**


	6. Chapter 6

The summer seemed to end instantly after the film festival incident, like a heavy stage curtain had been dropped over the anticlimactic conclusion of their drama. Milwaukee had two and a half weeks of pleasant fall weather, and by Jay’s birthday it was already getting cold at night, with snow in the forecast for the weeks ahead. 

Jay and Mike went to the German restaurant together for Jay’s birthday dinner as usual. There were plans for the regular group get-together afterward at the bar, no hard feelings maintained by anyone but Tommy. Even he had recently smiled at Jay with what looked like earnest benevolence when leaving Dix with another guy. It was a smile that said: I was right about you, but you were also right about me, and Jay felt no lingering angst about the whole thing. Josh had confirmed Jay’s suspicion that Tommy only gave a shit about these things when challenged by another guy. 

“Now you’re officially middle-aged,” Mike said, lifting his beer toward Jay’s after they’d placed their usual order for loads of schnitzel and bread.

“Thirty-five counts?” Jay said, toasting him. He shrugged and drank. “I feel younger than I did when I was in my mid-twenties.”

“I credit myself,” Mike said, and he gulped from his beer.

Jay grinned at him. Mike wasn’t wrong. Jay had by then accepted that he’d undergone his whole physical transformation as a reaction to Mike’s leering presence in his life more than anything else. They hadn’t fucked again since that time Mike spanked the living hell out of him, but Jay had sucked Mike off twice in the back room at work, and it had been a massive relief when Mike returned the favor and Jay loved it, both times. It wasn’t awkward with him, just felt good and made Jay want more. Being in an undiscussed, buffet-style non-relationship was okay so far, though they were both a little on edge.

They got drunk at the bar with their other friends, everybody eying them with curiosity but not asking, and Mike paid for an Uber to take them back to Jay’s place. Jay barely remembered getting there and was too tired for sex, which felt like the most middle-aged thing ever. He crawled into bed and moaned happily when he felt Mike curling up behind him and tucking an arm around his side. It was just cold enough in the apartment for sharing body heat under the blankets to feel good, not stifling. Mike generated a lot of it, probably best reserved for below-freezing nights, but Jay wasn’t complaining. He considered it a birthday gift and slept so well that he woke up a little sorry that he’d gone the whole night without stirring awake and reveling in the feeling of Mike wrapped around him. 

“Are you hungover?” Mike asked when Jay rolled over to face him in the morning. 

“Yes,” Jay said. His head hurt. “I still want to fuck. Just give me a sec.” 

“You have such a romantic way with words, Jay,” Mike said, but he looked relieved. He dragged his fingers through Jay’s hair and sighed like his life was so hard because he was in love with an asshole. Jay could relate. “I love it when you look like a drowned rat,” Mike said. “Like, queasy and disheveled.” 

“Gee, thanks. That’s really beautiful, Mike.” 

“It actually is, if you think about it.”

The rest of the year passed in a blur of snowstorms and slow days at the shop. Once a week or so the combination lead to a fuck in the back room. Most of the sex they had stayed confined there, and Jay wasn’t sure why or if he minded it. Mike continued to badger him about writing a movie script. Jay grumbled about it as if he was putting it off and not secretly trying to do it, on nights without Mike, then trashing every draft because nothing seemed good enough.

Jay’s sister got married on the day after Thanksgiving. Mike was his date. No one made any comment about this, probably because they weren’t sure if Mike was just keeping Jay company as usual or there for some other purpose. It wasn’t like they danced together. Mike overdid it at the open bar during the reception, and Jay had to shepherd him away to a hotel room to keep him from embarrassing himself, also Jay. 

“I’m sorry,” Mike said, slurring this into a pillow while Jay helped him take his pants off. “Y’know. Weddings. Really-- any family shit, man. It makes me feel like, uhh. Some kind of diseased orphan prostitute.” 

“Jesus,” Jay said, annoyed that he was missing the cake for this. “Just get some sleep.”

He went to brush his teeth and started to feel bad about this. He never asked Mike about his family, outside of his sister, who had settled in Racine and worked at a pastry shop. She still dated men who sucked, which was an ongoing concern. Jay wasn’t even sure if Mike’s parents were still alive. 

“You know you can talk to me about things,” Jay said when he was petting Mike’s hair in the morning, lingering in bed with him and ignoring calls to come down for brunch with his family. 

“‘Cause that’s gone great in the past,” Mike said, heavy-lidded and looking miserable, like he would need more than a sec before they fucked, maybe a few days.

“Mike. I’m serious. You know, I’m, um. I’m your buffet, too. You know that, right? Like, take what you want. Or what you need, whatever.” 

Mike moved down to bury his face against Jay’s chest, settling in closer when Jay wrapped his arms around him. 

“Oh, Jay,” he said, voice muffled against Jay’s skin. “It’s cute that you think that.”

Jay was kind of offended by this, and depressed by the whole wedding thing altogether. He didn’t invite Mike to have Christmas with his family, because he never had before and now thought Mike might actually hate it. Sometimes it was clear to him that they were wrong for each other, at least as soon as their connection was oxidized by the outside world, but every time he thought about making a clean break he just texted Mike to ask if he wanted to fuck instead. Mike always said yes. Jay started to feel insulted that Mike wasn’t asking back, and wished he had never tried to claim he didn’t belong to Mike, because it seemed to have put a stop to the fucked up-edness of Mike ordering him around via text and in bed.

“Can you rough me up a little?” he finally asked, when it was 2016 and Mike still hadn’t spanked him crazy hard like he had that first time.

Mike paused in mid-swoon, perched over Jay on Jay’s bed, early in the evening on a very cold night. 

“I think I can only rough you up a lot,” Mike said. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, fucking do it.” 

“Jay--”

“No, okay, fuck your warnings. Treat me like-- Like you want to, Mike. Like you hate me.” 

Mike shook his head hard, like Jay was crazy.

“I don’t hate you!” 

“But. You kinda do?” 

Mike stared down at him with his mouth hanging open, a look on his face like Jay had just plunged a sword through his chest. Then he just looked angry, which was Jay’s ideal outcome. Already his heart was beating faster while he peered up at Mike, waiting to see what would happen. 

“C’mon,” Jay said, nudging Mike in the gut with his knee. “We both know I deserve it.” 

“Who hurt you, man?” Mike asked, back to looking wounded.

“You did,” Jay said. “Do it again. Please.”

Jay had done a lot of thinking about this in recent months, especially on New Year’s Eve, which they didn’t spend together. Mike had said he loved him twice, both times using the past tense. He was clearly referencing a time prior to his admittance that he no longer wanted to protect Jay and now wanted to hurt him. Something had shifted, and Mike was miserable pretending otherwise. He wasn’t asking Jay for sex anymore, maybe because he thought Jay wanted to be cuddled and handled softly like on his birthday. Maybe it repulsed Mike to pretend they were something they weren’t. Jay could live without whatever that was if he got to have the other thing, what Mike really wanted.

“You’re giving me the strangest look right now,” Mike said, holding Jay’s shoulders down against the bed. He was already pressing pretty hard. 

“Is it pissing you off?” Jay asked.

“A little.”

“Good.”

Mike wrinkled his nose and huffed. 

“Okay,” he said, his eyes going dark in just the way Jay had wanted to provoke. “Okay, Jay. Wait here.” 

Mike went into the bathroom. Jay pulled off his shirt and was instantly cold, wanting Mike to come back and lie on top of him as he’d seemed to be planning to. Now he wasn’t sure what he was in for. He took his pants off and sat on the bed in his underwear, waiting obediently. 

When Mike returned to the bedroom doorway he paused there, holding the belt from Jay’s bathrobe. He looked startled, like something Jay was doing had caught him off guard.

“What?” Jay asked, tucking his hands between his knees. He sat up straighter, was lately worried that he was getting soft across the middle again. His chest was a little softer for sure, but it was winter and he was too sleepy to go to the gym after work most nights.

“Nothing.” Mike looked down at the robe belt in his hand. “Are you trying to look cute on purpose? Over there? To make me feel guilty about what I’m about to do to you?”

Jay flushed across his cheeks and shook his head. 

“I have never in my life intended to look cute,” he said, which was true.

This statement seemed to irritate Mike, which was good. He dumped his hesitation and crossed the room to tie the robe belt around Jay’s head, blindfolding him. 

“Stay there,” Mike said, shoving Jay’s shoulder a little when the blindfold was snugly in place. 

Jay pressed his lips together and nodded. His dick was getting hard and his heart rate had picked up. Nobody had ever done this to him before. He wasn’t even entirely sure what it was, and now he couldn’t see whatever was coming next.

“Here,” Mike said when he returned, touching Jay’s mouth. “Open.” 

Jay did, expecting Mike’s dick, or maybe his fingers. Instead, he felt silky fabric being shoved between his lips, against his tongue. Mike tied this around the back of his head, too. Biting down on it, fully hard now, Jay realized it was one of his neckties. It was probably the nicest one he owned, because Mike was an asshole like that.

For a minute Jay could only hear Mike breathing and feel Mike looking at him. 

“You’re hard just for this,” Mike said, reaching down to rub Jay’s tented erection. “You’re a fucking pervert, Jay.” 

Jay made a noise against the gag in his mouth, already drooling onto it. His cock was drooling against the front of his briefs, too, enough that would Mike would feel it through the fabric. 

“Taking these off,” Mike said, grabbing for the waistband. 

It felt weird to be stripped naked like that without seeing what was going on, or being able to speak. It was the kind of weird Jay had been chasing, wanting, and he was shaken by how effectively frightening it was, how fucking hot. He wanted Mike to put something around his neck, too, and yank him around like he was on a leash. 

Mike didn’t do that. He pushed Jay back onto the bed and shoved his legs up against his chest, making him feel more exposed than he’d ever been. His cock was dribbling onto his belly, untouched and throbbing. Jay wondered if Mike would tie his hands up, too, but instead he took them and guided them to Jay’s knees, pressing them there until Jay got the idea and held his legs against his chest. 

Jay gasped around the gag when he felt Mike spread him apart and breathe against his hole. He made some other kind of sound when Mike licked him there, something between a shout and a moan, his fingers pinching in tight around his shins. They had never done this. No one had ever done this for Jay, and he’d assumed he’d find it disgusting. Surrendered like that, letting Mike lick him, he already felt like he could come untouched if Mike kept licking him a little more widely, firmly, until he was licking inside and Jay was sort of crying into the gag, behind the blindfold, shuddering all over for how good it felt.

Without his vision, every sound was amplified, and the noises Mike made while licking into him seemed to fill the whole room, filthy and shameless. Jay allowed himself to imagine other people standing around the bed, watching him like this, and moaned into the gag, arched his back and pressed himself down against Mike’s mouth. 

“Be still,” Mike said, flicking him hard on the flank.

Jay tried to, but after a while was squirming again, wanting something more. Mike’s patient willingness to do this seemingly without end was starting to freak him out. He felt good and lit up all over but also empty, and he’d been wrong about being able to come just from being licked into like that. It was so close to enough that it was starting to hurt, but not enough. He didn’t dare touch his dick, just held his legs in place like Mike wanted him to.

At one point he tried to say Mike’s name, to beg. Behind the gag it came out sounding like the rest of his mindless moaning, and he flushed all over in a kind of panicked arousal, his legs shaking hard. He could feel Mike watching him like this even while ceaselessly teasing him into a frenzy, could feel him liking it.

Eventually he had to let himself sob a little, his shoulders and thighs aching with tension. Mike just pulled him apart wider, licked in deeper, and then Jay was sobbing a lot, wanting him so much it fucking burned. When Mike finally gave him a couple of fingers, pushing in roughly, he lost his breath and then moaned in gratitude, melting. He could feel his pinched shut eyes getting actually wet, and sweat trickling down from his temples beneath the blindfold. 

“You big baby,” Mike said, and it was still the worst insult he could level at Jay, especially with his fingers crooked inside him and playing him like he was too easy to break apart. “Begging me to be mean to you. Jesus christ. You can’t handle anything.”

Jay exhaled through his nose and made himself calm down as much as possible, wanting to prove he could take so much more than this, even though he already felt like he’d die if he didn’t get fucked soon. His chest was still jittery as he pressed down against Mike’s fingers and squeezed up around them. He let go of his legs and allowed them to fall open on the bed, ran his hands over his chest and toyed with his nipples, because he knew Mike liked watching him do it. 

“You look so pathetic,” Mike said, sounding almost sad about it. “I should take some video.”

Jay shook his head back and forth on the bed, again imagining others seeing him like this, anyone other than Mike. A powerful tremor that felt like the start of an orgasm moved through him, but it was something else, primal fear combined with a similarly automatic neediness that made him start rutting down against Mike’s fingers, trying to fuck himself on them. 

“Oh, you want to do all the work for me?” Mike said, pulling his fingers out. “Okay, we can do that.”

Jay heard the drawer on his bedside table opening and sighed with relief, figuring Mike was getting the lube. He’d only used his spit and Jay’s pre-come to finger him, which had felt good in the rough way Jay had wanted, but he was beyond wanting now and needed Mike inside him, for real, fucking into him in a way that wouldn’t work without lube. 

“Here,” Mike said, taking Jay’s hand. He pulled him up into a seated position. Jay felt weak, all his muscles trembling like he’d been running laps. Mike put something in Jay’s hand, and for half a second Jay thought it was the bottle of lube. But it was narrower, and the texture-- His shoulders jumped when he realized what he was holding. 

They had never discussed the fact that Jay had a silicone dick in the drawer beside the lube, but of course he’d known Mike had seen it. He’d actually been kind of shocked that Mike hadn’t teased him about it, but it wasn’t like he was going to bring it up himself. It had a vibrating function that he almost never turned on, because that made it feel even less like the real dick he wanted in him. He sat there holding it like an idiot, breathing hard against the gag. 

“Go ahead,” Mike said, moving away from the bed in a way that made Jay whine a little at the back of his throat, wanting to beg him to come back. “Take care of yourself, if you can’t wait. Lube’s there next to you on the bed.” 

Jay thought about shaking his head, or reaching up to pull the gag out and telling Mike he didn’t want to do this, that it was too much, too humiliating. He knew Mike had left his hands free so he could put a stop to all this if he got fed up, and so Mike could gloat that Jay didn’t know what the fuck he wanted after all, that he couldn’t take even half of what Mike was capable of. 

Jay groped for the lube with a shaking hand, holding the dildo in the other hand. He pictured Mike recording this on his phone, streaming it, smirking. Of course Mike wasn’t actually like that, which was why Jay loved him and trusted him more than anyone, so much that he was popping open the lube and pouring some onto the plastic cock he was about to fuck himself with. He got up onto his knees and resisted the urge to lean forward and rub his dick against the mattress. Just a few times would have set him off.

“Oh, c’mon,” Mike said when Jay prepared to awkwardly squat down onto the dildo. “Give me a better view than that.”

Jay’s mind was barely functional by that point, and he had to take a few shallow, nervous breaths and think about what Mike meant. He swallowed heavily when he figured it out, and turned his back to Mike, bending down with his head against the mattress and spreading his knees apart. 

It was more comfortable that way, because he could brace himself with his forehead pressed to the mattress, also because he could hide his face. The tie in his mouth was embarrassingly wet, but he supposed that was the least of his current list of humiliating features. He groaned into the gag when he pushed the fake cock into himself, trying to picture the look on Mike’s face while he watched this. He’d probably wanted it for a long time, ever since he saw the dildo in Jay’s bedside drawer. Maybe he’d seen it in there even before the second time they fucked, snooping around while Jay was dozing out on the couch after a night of drinking.

Fucking himself with this thing had always felt awkward to Jay, and it was even more so with his hands and his shoulders shaking and the lube sloppily overapplied. His hand kept slipping, and he couldn’t stop making pitiful little noises into the gag, because the dildo had always been too narrow and cold-feeling and all wrong compared to Mike’s bare dick inside him. He wasn’t sure how long this would go on, but felt like probably for a while.

“There you go,” Mike said, fake sweet. He was pretty far away, watching with his back against the opposite wall by the sound of it. “See, what do you need me for? Get that thing in deep, don’t be shy. Make it feel good, Jay. Let me see how you like it.”

Jay huffed and wanted to say he couldn’t, that this thing had never been enough to approximate how he liked it. But he didn’t need to say so. Mike knew. That was the whole point of this. 

“Jesus,” Mike said when Jay had the thing all the way in him, gripping it by the flared base and already feeling exhausted but not wanting to let it show. “You’re all shaky.” 

Jay realized then that Mike was almost certainly beating off to the sight of this, at least casually, his hand just resting on his dick while he watched. Jay sighed happily at the thought and fucked himself a little faster, hot all down the front of his chest for how disgusting he felt. The sounds were the worst part, the excess lube producing an obscene squelch with every inward push. It was the kind of humiliating submission he’d fantasized about for so long, like dragging himself naked over concrete while Mike watched, and he liked it, was so fucking hard it hurt, but more than anything he was hoping this would make Mike lose what little willpower he was clinging to and push inside him sooner than he’d planned to, if Jay put on a good enough show.

“Now leave it,” Mike said when Jay pushed the thing fully into himself again, his wrist starting to tire. He did as Mike asked, and just letting it sit there inside him felt even dirtier than fucking himself with it. He could hear Mike walking closer. “Lift your head up,” Mike said.

Jay did so, groaning when the movement made the dildo shift and slide against his prostate. 

“And nod,” Mike said, with a softness that made Jay shiver, “If you want me to touch you.” 

Jay nodded like a maniac.

Mike laughed and walked closer. Jay held his breath, and his shoulders jumped when Mike touched the base of the dildo, pressing it inward just a bit. 

“You’re fucking soaked in sweat,” Mike said, rubbing his hand over Jay’s back. Even that felt so good that Jay moaned for him, flushing across the back of his neck. “Is this hard work?” he asked, pressing against the base of the dildo again. 

Jay nodded, feeling pathetic and so close to coming that he suspected all Mike would have to do was pull that thing out of him and he’d go off. If he could somehow hold out past that and come for the first hard shove of Mike’s cock inside him, he’d bite the tie in half for how intense it would feel, how good.

“Are you all tapped out?” Mike asked, rubbing his hands over Jay’s ass cheeks. 

Jay considered what this might mean. He shook his head.

“Hmm. Okay.” 

Mike knelt on the bed beside him and ran his hand up over Jay’s back, to his shoulders. Jay stayed as steady as he could, on all fours and twitching anxiously around the dildo, wanting to pull it out and replace it with Mike. The way Mike was touching him was tender, soft in a way that made everything else about this seem dirtier. He stroked Jay’s sweat-damp hair, rubbed his fingertips over Jay’s sides until it tickled and he flinched, and finally brought his hands back to Jay’s ass, tapping him there a few times to watch him flinch again. 

Then he spanked Jay there, hard. Jay shouted into the gag and for a moment was again sure he’d started to come, because clenching up tight around the slick plastic pressure in his ass felt sickeningly wrong in just the right way, jarring him toward a startled climax that he didn’t quite reach. He was breathless anyway in the aftermath, and panicked for a second when he tried to open his eyes, having forgotten the blindfold was there.

“You can barely hold yourself up,” Mike said, mocking him for this so gently that Jay had to hold back a real sob, barely sure where he was all of a sudden. He sighed in relief when he felt Mike’s fingers brushing around the rim of his stretched open ass, then gripping the base of the dildo and pulling it out, slow.

Jay dropped down onto his chest when Mike pulled it free entirely and tossed it aside, replacing it with the blunt head of his cock as he shifted into position. 

“Gonna fuck you hard,” he warned, his hand going to Jay’s waist. He squeezed Jay there with bruising strength. “Yeah?” 

Jay nodded, would have agreed to anything as long as he got to have Mike inside him. He wanted to be fucked hard, spanked again, anything that meant nothing was held back for his sake, to protect him.

“Oh god,” Mike said when he pushed in, and Jay knew that this whole thing had him wound overtight, too, could feel it in the way Mike held his hips like he might get away. “Fuck yes, _fuck_.”

Mike losing his eloquence meant he wouldn’t last long. Jay just gurgled happily into the gag and stayed bowed down for him, drooling over his tie for the feeling of Mike opening him wider and sinking in deep, hot and thick and so good, so much better than anything else.

They both moaned with relief when Mike was fully inside him, locked around him from behind and warm against Jay’s sweaty back. Mike tucked his arm across Jay’s chest and untied the gag with his other hand. He slipped it out carefully while Jay panted as if it had been cutting off his air supply. Jay lifted one shaking hand to wipe at his mouth, sniffling. 

“Let me,” Mike said, pushing Jay’s hand away. He brushed his fingers over Jay’s lips, rubbed his thumb at the corners of his wet mouth. Jay let his hands flop uselessly against the mattress, his cheek resting against it until Mike lifted his head just enough to remove the blindfold, too.

Jay blinked at the familiar confines of his bedroom, feeling like he’d truly forgotten they were there, and not in some lair of Mike’s or a seedy motel room. His eyes felt gummy and raw. He closed them again when Mike kissed his cheek. 

“Are you gonna come if I touch you?” Mike asked, his lips moving on Jay’s skin.

“Yes,” Jay said, his voice croaky and small.

“Mhm. Okay. Not yet. Wait until I say so. Understand?”

“Mike,” Jay said. He wasn’t sure he could do it. He felt lit up from the inside, glowing with an aching, near to bursting pleasure and knowing that it would feel so good when Mike started thrusting into him, scary good. 

“I’ll help you,” Mike said, pinching Jay’s left nipple hard enough to make him yelp and clench up tight around Mike’s dick. “Don’t worry. You’re a fucking mess, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Jay said, nodding and sobbing this out.

“I know.” Mike kissed his cheek again and sighed before pulling back, sliding his hands along Jay’s sides as he came up onto his knees. “Just let me take care of it. Give you what you need.” 

Jay drifted away from every reality that wasn’t how badly he needed to come or how good it felt to be pushed to his near breaking point by the massive presence of Mike inside him. He felt like he was on a little rowboat that was buoyed by the sound of Mike’s voice, and kept nodding brainlessly at Mike’s murmured words until Mike started really fucking into him with sharp, ceaseless snaps of his hips. Jay let his mouth hang open and didn’t try to censor his sounds, didn’t care if the neighbors heard him shouting Mike’s name. Mike spanked him while still fucking into him, when he did it again Jay had to bite his tongue hard to keep from coming. 

“Gonna jerk you now,” Mike said when he was close, rhythmless and leaning over Jay’s back, grinding into him at intervals before pummeling him again. “That means you can come, Jay,” he said, nipping at Jay’s ear. “Hear me? Got that?”

Jay made a half-dead croaking sound, throbbing all over for how much he needed that. He could feel the throb not just along the length of his dick and at the seat of his balls but across his shoulders and the back of his neck, and in the tearing grip he had on the sheets. Everything in him was pulsing to the pace of Mike’s fast breath against his ear, too full.

“Jay?” Mike said, sounding a little worried.

Jay nodded weakly and spread his legs as much as he could stand to, begging for Mike’s hand between them. 

He jammed himself back hard onto Mike when Mike’s hand wrapped around his overfull cock and pumped, fast and sure like he knew Jay had nothing left in him that could stand being teased. Jay wasn’t sure if it was the shock of slamming himself back onto Mike’s dick or the squeezing strokes from Mike’s hand that got him off: both, probably, everything. He yanked on the sheets hard when he finally came, ripping the fitted one off the mattress entirely and pressing two handfuls of everything he could grab against his face so he could sob into the soft flannel and bite around it, gagging himself this time. 

It felt so good, rising with weightless relief out of that intensity and feeling Mike fuck him through it, his big hands tight on Jay’s waist. Jay was open and easy for him to fuck into by then, grinding back greedily even when it started to feel like too much as his orgasm wound down, leaving everything hypersensitive. Even Mike’s hand clawing across his chest and snagging on a nipple made Jay hiss and bury his face in the wrecked sheets again. He was starting to feel dizzy when Mike stilled behind him and came, breathing Jay’s name out like it was the magic word that would break the spell they’d both been under. 

Jay grinned and drooled onto the sheets as Mike crashed down onto him from behind, sweltering hot and breathing hard, his arms shaking and his hips still working against Jay’s ass as he emptied himself. He’d never said Jay’s name before, like that, when he came.

Time seemed to slow and then halt, and Jay didn’t mind. He left his tired eyes closed and felt Mike licking at the side of his throat. Mike’s mouth was wet and his breath was coming out choppy, like he was trying to force it back under control. It seemed to take all the energy he had left to lift his hips enough to drag his spent dick out of Jay, and when he collapsed beside Jay after he had, one arm still flopped across Jay’s back, it seemed like he might drop straight into sleep. 

Jay turned his face against Mike’s so that their shaky breaths mixed together over the sheets. They both blinked their eyes open with some effort, and Mike looked all the way into Jay like he always had, only now there was nothing to strip away to reveal his bare essence. Mike had seen it already. 

“You fucked up your bed,” Mike said, murmuring this softly and tilting his face up to look at the exposed mattress and the discarded tie, the belt robe flung beside it. 

“Me?” Jay said, boggling at him. Mike grinned and put his forehead against Jay’s, lowered his gaze. 

“I don’t hate you,” he said. 

“I know,” Jay said, still too far from reality to talk about that.

“Kinda seems like you-- Don’t?”

“I can’t--” Jay said, his voice trembling a little when he struggled to articulate why he couldn't handle any serious subjects just yet. 

Mike lifted his eyes to Jay’s again and nodded, seemed to get it. Jay needed something else, the thing he’d thought he could live without as long as he had other items from the Mike buffet instead. He curled himself against Mike’s chest when Mike’s arms wrapped around him, clung to Mike’s back. The smell of Mike’s skin just below his collarbone and above his soft pecs made Jay fucking crazy with lust if they hadn’t just fucked. Otherwise it was just comforting, like now.

“Goddamn,” Mike said after he’d held Jay for a while, letting him hide there. He ran his fingers through Jay’s hair, then gave it a soft tug. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, that was. Yes.”

“I didn’t tie anything too tight?” Mike asked. He nudged Jay upward so they were facing each other and brushed his fingers over Jay’s cheeks like he was checking for damage. 

Jay shook his head. He felt something welling up in him and also like he still wasn’t ready to say it. This was the love of his life, holding him in his sex wrecked bed. The former would always be true and the latter felt so fragile, though Mike was looking at him like he wouldn’t be scared away so easily anymore. 

They fell asleep together and indulged in a delivery takeout dinner when they woke up. Jay felt like some switch in him had been thrown and like he was still in Mike’s thrall in a way that made him hover too close to him and swallow his words, afraid he’d blurt _I’ve been in love with you for my whole life_ and burst into tears if he wasn’t careful. Mike didn’t seem disturbed by this phenomenon. Nor did he seem to want to gloat. He put his arm around Jay on the couch and turned to bury his face in Jay’s hair every time he laughed at something that happened in the movie they were watching, like he needed an excuse.

Mike stayed over. It was February, deep in the seemingly endless frigidity of the winter, and Mike's body heat was very welcome beneath Jay’s blankets. Jay woke up once an hour or so to adjust against Mike and remember that he was there, almost on purpose, dragging himself out of sleep just to make the most of this, like the thing that was afraid he’d never have it again stayed vigilant even while he slept. 

In the morning they dressed and went to the shop as usual. Jay made his coffee while Mike sat behind the counter, yawning. Jay wasn’t sure if this meant they were resetting. He wasn’t even sure he didn’t want to-- It was so thrilling to keep having these moments that felt like the first, something new, a moment in time that could never be replicated, because they weren’t mere mortals in some stupid relationship, they were doomed entities who fought forces more powerful than the both of them combined just to reach for each other and hold on for as long as they could. 

Mike looked over at Jay around ten in the morning and gave him a dopey grin, his cheeks pink from the cold that crept into the shop. Jay felt his heart ballooning and laughed under his breath. 

“What?” Mike said. 

“Nothing,” Jay said. “I was just thinking about how I always accuse you of being too sentimental, and. Never mind.”

“I don’t mind being accused of that. You realize it’s Valentine’s Day, right?”

“Oh god.” Jay felt his cheeks burning. He sipped from his coffee. “Of course it is.”

Mike raised his eyebrows, nodded, and gave Jay a look like: you’re in big trouble, therefore.

They ate dinner at the German restaurant, seated at the bar because every table was booked up with reservations. Even getting the bar seats was a miracle, largely attributed to their being loyal customers. They toasted each other with massive steins and Jay ate way too much. Mike kept touching his leg under the bartop and giving him moony grins. The weather was so bad that the place cleared out before nine o'clock, people hurrying through their romantic dinners because they were afraid the roads might close.

Jay and Mike kept on drinking, reckless with glee, and finally had no choice but to brave the walk home on foot. It was four miles, and the snow was driving, the wind evil. No Ubers were available. The streets were empty. 

“I’m gonna drink less in the new year!” Mike said, shouting this over the wind.

“Like-- This year?” Jay asked. “Or next?”

“Oh, next. I need ten months to really commit to this plan.” 

Mike had already been cutting back, Jay had noticed. He didn’t dare mention it, and had been drinking slightly more himself, just for spending more time with Mike. They both managed the walk back to Mike’s apartment without puking or freezing to death, and when they got there Mike turned his shower on and made the water as hot as it would get. 

“Oh my goddd,” Mike said, holding Jay’s face between his hands when they were standing under the steaming water together, too delirious to even get hard. “Look at this _face_. Do you even know what you look like?”

“Yeah,” Jay said. “I had to really bust my ass for years to look this average.”

“Average! Please, you don’t believe that. Where’s my movie script, Jay? I’m gonna make you a fucking star, you’ll see.”

“I don’t wanna be a star.”

“Tough shit, it’s your destiny. I see it written on your face, right here.”

They curled up together on Mike’s couch under a pile of blankets and watched twenty minutes of a movie together before falling asleep. Jay didn’t care about Valentine’s Day, or dates, but that evening was his favorite ever instance of both, and he didn’t even get fucked until the next morning, which made them late for work.

Something quieted and settled into place between them over the next few years, maybe just because they were prematurely becoming old men. Jay still looked younger than he was but often felt tired and just wanted to hide from the world under Mike’s arm, in the comfort of one of their dumpy apartments. Mike kept his promise to himself to drink a little less and lost thirty pounds without ever mentioning it, pretending like he hadn’t noticed. He smiled more easily and started putting his hand on the small of Jay’s back when they were out together with their friends. They occasionally got asked if they were a couple, and had a policy of laughing as if the person asking had missed out on some inside joke. 

Mike moved into Jay’s apartment at the end of the decade, just before New Year’s Eve. On the actual holiday Jay made his fettuccine and bought a bottle of champagne for each of them, and Mike laughed when he put _2001_ on when he started cooking. 

“Oh, you broke my heart that night,” Mike said, coming up behind Jay at the stove and kissing the back of his neck.

“I didn’t mean to,” Jay said. “You were too sensitive, just-- What, just because I went to bed by myself?”

“You left me out there on the couch! Aw, but you were so-- I get it now, I do.”

“What do you get, Mike.”

“You always wanted me to follow you. Like when I’d walk you home, in high school. You’d give me this look at the end of your driveway, like. Why are you leaving?”

“I did not!”

Jay grinned down at the sauce he was stirring, tilting his neck so Mike would kiss him more, maybe give him a little bite. Mike dragged his teeth over Jay’s throat like a promise to bite him later, squeezed his waist with both hands. 

“Tell me that script you pretend you’re not working on is about me and you in high school,” Mike said.

“It’s not,” Jay said. There was nothing he wanted to write about less than himself. “It’s about these two cops--”

“Oh my god, there is a script!” Mike hugged him hard and kissed the top of his head, sort of rocking him in his arms. “Tell me, tell me, shit--”

“Ugh, I am!” Jay was beaming, his face hot from the steaming pan on the stove, also from Mike’s interest in this thing he’d been too afraid to talk about. “Okay, um. These guys are partners, they grew up in a small town and they’ve been best friends since--”

“It’s me and you, right? We’re playing them?”

“Of course! We can’t afford actors.” 

“Oh god, okay, great, tell me more.”

Mike stayed hugged around Jay there at the stove while Jay told him about his idea, that these two cops skeptically interviewed a guy who claimed his identical twin was the leader of a niche but dangerous cult that believed they were summoning a demon who would bring about the end of the world, which turns out to be true.

“It’s funny but it’s dark,” Jay explained, stirring frantically. He’d been hoping for a long time that Mike would like this idea, and he was a little tipsy but sincerely into it, seemed like. “I mean, of course, you know. The one cop, played by me, is in love with the one played by you.”

Jay flushed and turned the heat down on the stove, hoping Mike would hear what he needed to in this, if he still needed to hear it. Jay had told him in six hundred different ways, over the years. He would keep saying it however he could, for as long as it took.

“Of course,” Mike said, reaching down to stroke Jay’s belly, which had recently gotten soft in a way that Jay considered chubby, a designation Mike scoffed at while also getting off on its softness, Jay could tell. 

“And yeah, they, you know. They defeat the evil twin, and befriend the good one, and they fall in love, but it’s subtle. Tasteful, you know.”

“Tasteful, yes,” Mike said, thumbing at the button on Jay’s jeans in a way that made Jay snicker.

Three days later, after Mike had read the draft script and gushed over it in a way that made Jay feel like Mike only thought it was genius for the same reason he thought Jay’s face was perfect, because Mike loved him, a guy came to the VCR repair shop to inspect their sprinkler system. His name was Rich and he was dumpy in a way that did make Jay think of his cult leader and hapless twin characters. He still didn’t expect Mike to boggle at him as soon as Rich went into the back room to inspect the sprinklers. 

“Jay!” Mike said, speaking with his jaw clenched. “That’s the guy, the guy we should cast--”

“Oh, c’mon,” Jay said. “He’s a handyman, not an actor.” 

“But he’s fucking-- He’s got the energy! Shit, when he walked in? It was like I recognized him!”

Jay waved Mike off, but this was what Mike was brilliant at: recognizing opportunity and talking the right people into the right things. Rich clearly thought Mike was insane, but agreed to give a screen test a shot for a hundred bucks. 

It worked out, in ways Jay never would have dreamed of even after he’d changed his appearance as if waving a magic wand over himself and landed the guy he’d been in love with since adolescence. Before too long he was comfortably sitting at an indoor film festival with a surprisingly good turnout, wearing a tailored suit and watching the premiere of his okay-ish independant movie, of which Rich was the best part. It helped that Jay was sitting beside Mike, grabbing for his arm at moments and hiding his face against Mike’s shoulder twice, when he couldn’t stand how good or bad the movie was, couldn’t even tell. It was the horror movie feeling he’d chased all his life: watching the one he had made, seen by these total strangers, after he’d really, really tried to make it good.

The movie was judged just okay by the consensus of critics who bothered to see it at all. Mike thought it was really good. Jay thought it was better than he’d been given credit for but would never admit it, even to Mike. He got fantastically drunk at the post-screening party and basically had to be carried to the hotel room by Mike. Rich would become ironically famous online within a few weeks. 

“I love you so much,” Jay finally said, trashed and holding Mike’s face in his hands while lying back on starched hotel pillows, the room spinning around them. “Like the most-- Ever thing I do, is love you, fuck.”

“Aww,” Mike said, relatively sober. He kissed Jay on the lips, then the nose. “Yeah, I know. Remember when you pretended you didn’t?”

“When-- What! I used to stare at you in middle school, fuck off. You always knew.”

“Ohh, Jay. You left me on the couch to go take a shower and get in bed alone after the first time we fucked.”

“Well-- Ah! It made sense to me, at the time. You were gonna throw up on me, you said.”

“I know I was a shithead, too.”

Jay pecked Mike on the lips and rolled over, pulling Mike down against his back to get him just where he wanted him. He grinned into the pillow and pressed his ass back to snuggle closer to Mike, remembering vaguely that this was the premiere night for their movie, and that it had not been a disaster by any stretch. 

“Our kiss was really good,” Mike said. “In the movie.”

“No, it wasn’t!” Jay laughed, remembering how awkward he’d found it, watching with an audience. It had been one of the times he’d buried his face against Mike’s shoulder to hide. “The real one was better, the first one, or. All of them.”

“God, of course! Everything real is better, but only for people like me and you, who have movie script lives anyway. Like the kind of-- You know, like. We’re the people who actually live these things that movies get written about.”

Jay fell asleep thinking: yep, yeah. Sometimes Mike was so fucking dramatic, romantic, but also so right about things.

**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A further theme song: [The Whole of the Moon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu7AR0-FRro)


End file.
